


First Steps

by CrownBeed



Series: First Steps [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Humor, Hux is not the abuser, I'll take suggestions for more tags, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Backstory, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Non-graphic depictions of violence, POV Hux, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, graphic depictions of childhood psychological/emotional abuse, post episode vii, pre episode viii, reference childhood non-physical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:31:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrownBeed/pseuds/CrownBeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the fallout after the destruction of Starkiller base.<br/>An examination of Kylo Ren through Hux's eyes as he deals with the aftermath.</p><p> <br/>Or in the words of <a href="http://neurovicky.tumblr.com/">NeuroVicky</a> (who made some <a href="http://neurovicky.tumblr.com/post/147815273829/as-a-fan-of-post-tfa-fic-that-portrays-hux-as-lost#notes">fanart</a>, check it out!): "A post tfa fic that portrays Hux as lost and angry and a mess after Starkiller.... Everyone is a fuckup ( except for Phasma), there’s an undercover mission, bonding over food, feelings and the most satisfyingly resolved ust ever."<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

General Hux fought the urge to scream, fidget, twitch or sigh; to do so would betray his feelings regarding the 'importance' of the assignment he and his crew were performing and he did not need to demoralize them any more than they already were after the destruction of Starkiller base.

But he was so bored, and boredom made it very difficult to ignore his rage.

Sometimes, in his worst moments, he remembered the tantrums and pure lunacy Kylo Ren used to display when things didn't go his way and would find himself envious of that sort of freedom. What must it be like to let all of your frustration out in such a way without the fear of retribution? If Hux could turn a console into rubble with just his fist without losing the respect he had cultivated in his underlings he still wouldn't be able to do it.

How would he stop? He had become so adept at supressing his own rage, tamping down frustrations and disappointment, that he wasn't sure that he would be able to hold back once he let a little bit out. One crack in his wall would turn into a fissure would turn into a hole would turn the sturdy structure of his psyche into nothing but rubble and dust.

Then everything he had worked for, everything he had accomplished would be worth much less than it was now. He may have lost the base but he still had his position and that was worth something.

Perhaps the Supreme Leader would remember that, if he could turn up something semi-useful on this damned moon.

After he had dropped an injured Kylo Ren off at Snoke's Citadel he had spent several months overseeing and attending to petty disputes among First Order territories before being summoned to a meeting with Snoke where he was instructed to investigate a very old trail of Luke Skywalker's.

The Supreme Leader didn't deem it necessary to tell Hux how he came across the fifteen year old information and at the time Hux wasn’t willing to risk further chastisement by asking when knowing the answer wouldn’t change the orders. He received co-ordinates to a small planet in an unknown system somewhere between the unknown regions and the outer rim; and disturbingly close to Endor. When Hux expressed confusion as to why Luke Skywalker would have been there nearly two decades after the Battle of Endor the Supreme Leader waved him away as though answering such questions was beneath him.

Once at the co-ordinates they found a very abandoned temple on a deserted planet. Just before Hux resigned himself to turning up absolutely nothing one of the stormtroopers reported finding a very old holodisc along with several similar, but crudely drawn, system maps. After evaluation they determined that the map appeared to be a diagram of the unknown system they were in. The most detailed object was a moon for a planet that was nearly hidden from them amongst an asteroid field. Hux attempted to inform the Supreme Leader of their find, but the secretarial droids in the Citadel informed him that Supreme Leader Snoke was unavailable due to tutorial duties. Hux took this to mean 'Snoke is playing favourites again, and you aren’t it.'

After his request for an audience with Supreme Leader Snoke was denied repeatedly for a month and a half straight he decided to send a squad of stormtroopers to the damned moon anyway and set the Finalizer on a course that would bring them as close to it as they could without risking collision with the asteroid field. Then he proceeded to his rooms, had some chamomile tea, and managed to not set anything on fire despite desperately wishing to.

It was an insult to not just himself, but the crew of the Finalizer to assign them this mission. They were top tier First Order officers and crew performing reconnaissance that they knew would be ten years out of date,  _at best_ , in the hopes that it would lead them to some wizard that doesn't want to be found. All while they  _knew_  the Resistance already had that information.

They were being punished for Kylo Ren's mistakes; and making some desperate attempt to pick up the pieces of the destruction caused by  _his_  idiocy. General Hux had been in control of the most destructive and powerful weapon the galaxy had ever seen, thanks in no small part to his own genius, and now here he was running some sort of private detective agency.

The First Order was weakened by the battle on Starkiller Base, yes, but so was the Resistance. They knew where the Resistance's primary base was stationed; they should be taking advantage of any discord the destruction of the Hosnian System caused. The First Order may have lost a super-weapon but they still had an entire fleet of high grade, destructive war machines; the best seen since the Imperial Army's destruction. They had the most effective and cost efficient army seen in hundreds of years, thanks to-

Hux felt his eyebrow twitch and forced himself to breathe slowly and calm down before he did something he'd regret.

If he ever saw Kylo Ren again he was going to rip off the man’s stupid limbs and bash his skull in with them; the colossal  _idiot_. How dare that Sith-wannabe get away with failing to catch that damned droid and replacing it with a scavenger child and giving her one guard? One guard! In  _Hux’s_  base! And then to have the nerve to try catching her again without informing Hux first; as though Kylo could find her in such a large base with his moronic powers, boneheaded stubbornness, and a handful of Hux's troops while they were launching their  _second attack against the Resistance_.

That oscillator was Hux’s pride and joy, a creation of his very own genius to allow the Starkiller super-weapon to store at least triple the dark energy that it was originally intended to without imploding. Hux spent years of his limited free time studying dark energy and hyperspace tunnelling and following the construction of the base to come up with a way to make it more stable, more financially feasible. He couldn't even look at mathematical equations anymore without wanting to scream.

Hux could have shot Kylo Ren in the back of the head when he heard that Kylo  _knew_  the enemy had been in the oscillator support chamber and abandoned it without informing anyone to go get half-murdered in the middle of-

General Hux stood on the bridge of the Finalizer and managed to control his breathing and focus his thoughts on the mutterings of "all clear" that came through the speakers of his command station for several minutes before losing track of his thoughts again.

 _And Kylo thinks a clone army would be more advantageous; daring to cite that single defector as proof_. Hux may have had to re-evaluate his troop captains and supervisors, and then order reconditioning of stormtroopers showing signs of non-conformity in an attempt to cull out anyone seeking to re-enact FN-2187's defection. But so far only 28.7% of the stormtrooper program required reconditioning; only 1.2% of that required termination. Even so, it was  _still_  more cost-effective than a damned clone-

"Sir, we may have found something."

Hux mentally snapped himself to attention. He stood in front of a collection of 2-dimensional holoscreens, each displaying the feed from the stormtroopers’ helmets and settled his gaze on Captain Phasma's display. The view swivelled from the rubble of what once might have been a rather impressive storage facility to a still standing section and what appeared to be a rotting wooden door.

"Report, Captain." he snapped, still in the process of smothering his irritation.

"Despite the mass forest that resides on this moon, this is the first instance of woodwork found in this structure." Captain Phasma paused before continuing, "There also appears to be a thinner layer of dust on the wood than there is elsewhere, sir."

The General arched an eyebrow, "So, why are you hesitating to enter."

The sound of Phasma shifting in her armour was his only response for several seconds.

She barely suppressed a resigned sigh, "I feel uneasy about it, sir."

Hux frowned, "Elaborate, Captain."

"It feels like I shouldn't even keep my eyes on it, like we should turn around."

"Is there an alternative method of entry?"

"No, sir. None that would not risk damage to whatever lays inside." 

Hux knew she didn't spook easily, and despite her mistake with FN-2187, she was still his most trusted captain. He would never have allowed her to oversee the stormtrooper program if he didn’t have complete faith in her ideals and proficiency.

He considered how long Snoke had been ignoring his calls, and the lunacy of this assignment. Unwilling to risk any of his people for a fool’s errand he ordered Phasma and her team to retreat to a safe distance and shoot on the door. This 'bad feeling' sounded childish, but he had read similar reports when other people entered Jedi and Sith temples. Perhaps Skywalker had been here after all.

He was, admittedly, a little disappointed when the door only lost a corner and fell over. He had rather hoped it had been rigged with explosives. Fireworks would be nice.

When Phasma enters the small room, and moves the door out of the way, he’s quite pleased that it hadn’t actually been rigged. An explosion surely would have ruined the dusty notebooks set on a small table and the boxes containing very old holodiscs and papers. When Phasma picks up a dusty beige robe with the muzzle of her blaster he finds himself wondering why a man would hide on a planet so far away from the relative safety of the New Republic, but can’t stop himself from smirking anyway. At least it’s  _something._

“Send a shuttle with transportation pods to Captain Phasma’s location,” he orders, Lieutenant Mitaka immediately begins sending messages on his datapad, “and inform the intelligence center to dedicate a room and some personnel to the task of sorting through this junk. Message me on my datapad when something useful has been found.  Admiral Turner you have the bridge.”

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

 General Hux was cleaning up after taking supper in his personal quarters when his datapad chirped, bringing his attention to a message from Intel. Upon his arrival to the dedicated room he found only two personnel and a droid parsing the items Captain Phasma and her team brought on board. When the door shut behind him, the two Intel Officers snapped to attention and saluted him.

“Findings?” Hux asked.

“Most of the documents found on the desk appear to be a study of the local planetary flora, and many of the holodiscs we have found appear to be non-functional or they-”

Hux stopped himself from rolling his eyes in exasperation, “I was told there had been progress, Officer. Please tell me something good.”  

“Ah, well, we found a locked box titled ‘B. Solo,’ the droid only managed to open it a few minutes before your arrival, sir. We have not yet examined its contents. But we know that Han Solo and Luke Skywalker’s sister had had a boy once, and we were thinking this might be in relation to him, uh, sir.”

Hux frowned to hide his curiosity; Han Solo certainly did have a son, he just didn’t go by that name anymore, “Have you been able to determine if these are actually Skywalker’s things?”

“Not definitively sir, but so far evidence heavily suggests it is.”

After a few moments of internal deliberation, Hux gave in to his curiosity and ordered the B. Solo box delivered to his private quarters so he could examine its contents himself.

“If you find anything else relating to B. Solo I would appreciate it being sent to my quarters as well.”

Although confused the officers did not pause before saluting.

On his way back to his rooms, General Hux sent a message off to Lieutenant Mitaka telling him that he wasn’t to be bothered for the next 32 hours unless they were attacked or received communications from Supreme Leader Snoke. He had to stop himself from bouncing on his feet several times on the way back to his quarters,  _finally, something interesting_.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

 In his rooms Hux sat at the desk where he collected the oldest holoplayers he could find on-board the Finalizer and opened a blank file on his datapad; ready to go through the box and summarize his findings. He strips down until he’s in his undershirt, uniform pants and socked feet then pulls the box titled 'B. Solo" closer to the desk.

After removing the lid with a soft metallic click he removes a handwritten journal that lay on top of several dozen holodiscs.  _Most of these must be at least three decades old,_  they were the size of his hand for goodness sake; it was pure luck that he had a player they would work on.

Ignoring the discs for now Hux opens the leather-bound journal. He skims the first several pages which appear to be nothing more than an expression of sorrow for the loss of the boy named Ben in a scratchy hand; most of it illegible. It isn't until the ink changes and the writing becomes more controlled and understandable that Hux starts truly reading.

 

    _I need to find out where I went wrong with Ben, I thought he had control over his powers, but I was wrong. The tragedy I caused will never be repaired, but maybe if I can make a record of where I went wrong some future Jedi Master will be able to get different results with their students. ~~I wish Yoda was able to~~_

 _I had sent a message to Leia a few weeks ago asking if there was anything she could tell me about Ben which I might not have paid much attention to as he was growing up. I didn't get to see them as much as I would have liked, after the war and after Ben was born._    _ ~~I had to start a school, I just wanted~~_

_Leia messaged back, she sent a holovid about what she remembers and copies of every family vid they had. I'm afraid to see how badly I failed my nephew, I’m not much of a Jedi Master; anybody else could have done better, anybody-_

 

In the privacy of his own rooms Hux allows himself the freedom of rolling his eyes. As he searched the box for the above-mentioned holovid he couldn't stop himself from chuckling at how dramatically the Skywalker line expressed their emotions; hiding oneself away to bemoan past mistakes? Sure, why not.

 Upon finding a holodisc that was only half as old in design as the rest Hux dusted it off, shoved it in the player and settled in for what he presumed was going to be a better soap opera than the garbage found on the HoloNet these days.

 

The vid started with Leia Organa settling herself on a stool at what appeared to be a kitchen island, she sighed and seemed to have difficulty meeting the lens of the recorder; her eyes looking off towards something just to the left of it.

 "Well Luke," she started "I'm not sure how much help I’ll be. You know I wasn't home much. I was often at the capital; Han and Ben, sometimes Chewie as well, stayed at the cottage while I stayed in a small apartment during the week, and oftentimes the weekend, so I didn’t have to spend 8 hours a day driving to and from work. Han would be able to offer you better information, but even I can’t get a hold of him anymore. He showed up after the...incident at your school and he was livid. He demanded to know where you were, and when I wouldn't tell him he snapped at me. He thinks we could have done more, that we shouldn’t have sent Ben away, that we-" Leia sniffs and the image flickers and goes out, when it starts again Leia’s eyes are puffier and she has a mug cradled in her hands.

"I'm not sure where you want me to start, Luke. Ben might have been an unhappy baby; he seemed to cry a lot, but everyone I spoke to about it told me some babies were just like that and it was normal…I wonder now if it really was. He was very smart though, he picked up on lessons very quickly; but he didn't socialize well. He didn’t seem to like any of the kids he was introduced to. Sometimes he said that they were slow, sometimes he said they were mean to him, sometimes he said they were loud.

"Han and I spoke about maybe putting him in a daycare program a couple of days a week, the best ones were in the capital, so I took a week off; as much as I could anyway. Han and Ben came to my apartment for a week when Ben was about...oh four, four and a half. I think that’s when things really started going downhill. He hated it; he kept saying he wanted to go home; said he felt better there. Han wanted to take him back that first night and I barely managed to convince him to give it a couple of days.

"The second day we took Ben to a small marketplace for lunch before going to introduce him to one of the daycares. You know how he loves fried ice cream, I thought maybe we could placate him, make him more comfortable by giving him that first. Gods Luke, it was so busy at that damned market, I don’t know what I was thinking. But we were waiting in line, I was holding Bens hand, and I let go for just a moment and he was gone.

"We must have searched for him for only twenty or thirty minutes, but it felt like hours. It was a nightmare. When we found him he was in an alley that I could have sworn we had looked down several times. But he was just sitting there, in this surprisingly empty alley, playing with some sort of wooden square thing. It was a puzzle toy, made up of tiny squares; each side had to have matching squares for the puzzle to be completed. I don’t think you ever saw it, but Ben was obsessed with it for a long time. I thought maybe he had stolen it from a toy stall or something, but he said that a friend gave it to him. I tried asking him who his friend was, and he wouldn’t tell me. I tried asking if he had met the friend before but he said he hadn't. When I asked how he knew the person was his friend he said that he 'just knew'.

“I don’t know what happened to that toy, neither does Han. He said that Ben had a habit of hiding it from him; he liked to play with it alone. Han figured Ben was trying to solve it and would show it off when he did. But we never saw it again after that day.”

Leia sighs, "We ended up taking Ben home after that. He also started having nightmares; I don’t remember if they started before or after the marketplace incident, but I do remember thinking that he was probably having nightmares about being lost. Why would I think that? When we found Ben that day he wasn't afraid, he was calmer than he had been since he had come to the capital. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong. Regardless, Ben wouldn't tell Han what the nightmares were about when he woke up with them, or maybe he couldn't. But he often crept into Han's bed; one time, when I was home, after he had a nightmare he woke me up and told me that I was in his spot. That hurt...I tried to spend more time at home, but I couldn't, I was needed in the capital. I-"

Leia cuts herself off and breathes deeply for several seconds before continuing.

"The nightmares started tapering off as he got older, but he became much moodier instead. He must have been about six years old when he started throwing tantrums.  Screaming at Han when he wasn’t allowed to eat a treat he wanted before supper, or had to go to bed. He starting asking me if I loved him, and why I was never home, and he never seemed satisfied with my answers; like I was disappointing him. Han was getting frustrated, he didn’t know how to handle it alone, and Ben started going off on his own more often and Han figured maybe Ben just needed space.

"By the time he was 9 he was getting more violent with his tantrums, things on the walls would shake, and sometimes things broke. Han was getting nervous, because he didn’t understand the force stuff; he didn’t know how to help Ben. I was able to spend more time at home, and I tried to teach Ben some control over it, meditation and whatnot, I told him what we knew of the force. He was receptive at first, but after a year or so he started to say that I was trying to control him by telling him what to do, and that I didn’t really love him or care about him. He didn’t seem to think that anyone cared about him; he said that neighbourhood kids only ever wanted to talk to him about his parents, or they made fun of him for not being a Jedi yet. He must have felt so alone Luke and I didn’t know how to help him.

"It started to feel like the only time Ben was happy or enjoyed himself was when he was helping Han rebuild that speeder. I distinctly remember Han telling me that when Ben was tinkering sometimes he get chatty, usually he liked to talk about friends he made in the woods. Ben claimed he had a deer friend, and a bunny friend, and a head friend. Ben said that he helped a baby bird friend fly up to its nest once, but wouldn’t elaborate on what he meant. When Han asked what a head friend was Ben seemed confused and said he thought everyone had friends in their heads. When Han told me about it later we assumed Ben meant an imaginary friend. But what if he didn’t, Luke? I know he was a lonely boy, but he was 11, do 11 year olds even have imaginary friends? I feel like I should have known more about children, I should have done more, tried harder, paid more attention. I don't-"

The holovid image cut off again, and when it restarted Leia was sitting on a couch in different clothing.

"When Ben was thirteen I was home for the summer but I barely saw him. He spent most of his time in the neighbouring tree copse or along the lakeshore. He was frightening when he got angry and by that time we barely had any ceramic decorations, pictures didn’t hang on the wall anymore, and the frames we kept on shelves didn’t have glass. Every time we had to replace a glass window we did so with duraplastic. He was powerful and had excellent control when he wasn’t upset. I watched him once build a floating bridge five feet into the middle of the lake with small rocks. One time I opened his bedroom door to find him sitting in the middle of his floor with books and toys frozen in the air. The bed and dresser were levitating several inches off the floor. But when I opened the door his eyes snapped to me and they were the darkest I had ever seen them, there was so much hatred in them, he wasn't...he scared me, Luke. He slammed the door shut on me, and wouldn’t let it open for several minutes. When the door did finally open everything was back where it was supposed to be; furniture on the floor, toys on the shelves. But the window was open and he was gone.

"It was then I messaged you and asked you to teach him. Han fought me on it, but you know that. Do you think Ben is still out there, Luke? Do you think he’s happier wherever he is? Is he safe? Do you think he'll come back? Do you-"

 

Hux grimaced when Leia started crying and ejected the disc, eyeing it curiously before tossing it onto the corner of his desk. Back in the box Hux considered the holodiscs with renewed interest; home movies? How quaint. Hux knows there are no vids of his own childhood; his father would never waste his time on such drivel, and his mother would have been too afraid of his father finding out.

Hux inserts the first disc he finds that isn’t titled 'baby Ben.' As entertaining as all this is he has no interest in seeing Kylo Ren as an infant. He'll have the intelligence office peruse them later in case there are names of places Skywalker may have viewed as a safe haven mentioned, but he would rather eat his gloves than watch videos of a drooling baby.

 _Or a crying one, as it were._ Hux snorts

Finding a disc entitled 'my little genius' he inserts it into the player and taps his fingers on the desk.

 

The vid starts as though the lens is stuck in a curtain, or hair. A child giggles in the background and a man sighs with fond exasperation.

"Chewie, you're covering the lens. When I asked you to record this, I was kind of hoping there would be something to see-"

Hux raises an eyebrow when the camera is obviously shuffled around and there are muffled wookiee noises. He had heard the stories of the wookiee that traveled with Han Solo, of course, but he hadn’t necessarily considered that the wookiee would have been present for Kylo Ren's childhood.

When the vid settles on Han Solo and what might be a baby (perhaps a toddler – Hux wasn’t entirely familiar with the distinction between the two) the wookiee manages to make a sound that comes across as both inquisitive and annoyed. Hux didn't realize wookiees were so...expressive. But then, he hadn’t ever had occasion to speak to one either.

"Yes, I  _am_  happy you filthy dust-ball, thanks so much. Now shut up, Ben and I are going to talk to mommy." Han picks the baby up and sets him on his knee, "Wave to mommy Ben, well. Wave to Chewie and pretend he's mommy. Or not, just. Wave, there we go. Hello Leia, Benny learned a new trick; he took a step this morning. You're gonna have to come home soon, so you can chase him around the house. Wanna show mommy what a big boy you are Benny? C'mon lets-"

Hux rolls his eyes and fast forwards through the vid to see if anything exciting happens, but it appears as though the entire thing is an exercise in getting 'Benny' to walk on camera. Hux grins and thinks about calling Kylo ‘Renny’ next time he needs to be reprimanded. It’s not as though the usual admonishments are effective.

Still grinning Hux skips several tapes before finding one entitled 'Ben's four!' and playing it out of curiosity. The vid starts on a close-up of a neon green cake that says 'happy 4th Ben' and Hux rolls his eyes. Of course they threw parties for a four year old; as if a child that age would be able to appreciate it.

 

The vid swivels to show a wookiee eating at a picnic table with Leia Organa and what must be Luke Skywalker a few feet away in the middle of what appears to be a serious discussion; they are motioning to the datapad in Leia’s hands and when she receives a notification for a new message they both snap their gazes to it and start heading off-screen. Neither of them pays attention to the little boy with black hair sitting on the ground by Leia’s feet, tugging on her pants. The boy's eyes start to water when his mother and uncle walk away from him. The holocam picks up Han Solo’s muttered swearing before it’s placed on the picnic table and Han appears onscreen approaching the boy, picking him up, and bringing him back. The child's tears stop almost as soon as his father starts speaking to him.

"Hey little guy, how are you doin’'?"

"'m not liddle." Ben mumbles.

Han chuckles, "Sure aren't, look at you, you're 4 years old! I think it’s finally time to teach you something only big boys know how to do."

Ben perks up immediately, grinning he demands “tell me, tell me!"

"You're gonna learn how to braid wookiee hair!" Chewbacca's head snaps up from his food with alarm and Han laughs, "don't let the big dog fool ya, kid. Wookiees love having their hair braided."

Chewbacca protests, but Ben is giggling and reaching for him.

 

Hux fast-forwards through the rest of the video and doesn’t realize he's smirking until he ejects the disc. He quickly scans through the holodiscs left in the box and his attention is caught on one entitled "Ben's first vid!" After inserting it Hux has to pause it almost immediately because he choked on his tea at the sight of what is  _obviously_  a pre-teen Kylo Ren. He sniggers as he gets up to fetch a towel to clean up the mess he made.

Hux had never before considered that Kylo Ren had to grow into his nose and ears and the process in doing so resulted in an extremely goofy looking kid.  Still chuckling Hux restarts the video.

 

The vid starts with a close up of Ben's face, he grins and turns the recorder around and sneaks down a hallway towards the voices of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the kitchen. Han’s back is turned towards Ben, but Luke’s eyes catch sight of him and, with a small smile, he turns back to his conversation with Han, as if he hadn't seen the little Solo sneaking up on them.

"-many kids tested positive? For midicloes or whatever." Han asked.

"Midi-chlorians, Han." Luke chuckled, "And a few, although it’s mostly been small amounts. Nowhere near my levels, but they could still use direction; perhaps I could pass on what I’ve learned. I don’t really have anything better to do."

Han laughed, "Leia would disagree."

"Leia wants me to sit in on political meetings and watch people argue about...taxes or something. As though I have any idea how to do any of that. Other people can do that, who else is going to start a Jedi school? I have to; there is no one else left."

"Don't do it just because you feel like you have to. If you want to be a pilot you could probably do - fuck, shit! Ben! What?" Han bent down towards the shaking recorder, Ben was giggling too hard to hold it steady "you scared me Ben."

"That was the point." Ben laughed, "And you said bad words."

"I did not!" Han said, standing up and holding his hand to his chest as though offended.

Luke grinned "you definitely did."

"You’re supposed to be on my side, Skywalker."

"Stop pouting,  _Solo_. You're an adult now."

"In theory," Han mutters. He bends down to be on level with the recorder, "So, you gonna be a director, Ben? Making super horror prank vids? I hear it’s a pretty big market on the HoloNet." 

 

Hux snorts at the idea of 'Kylo Ren, the film director' and pulls Skywalker's journal back towards himself, skimming it while the video plays in the background. He goes back a page when he realizes he's on a passage where Skywalker describes receiving Ben for training.

 

_I already had a few students with me when Leia asked me to bring Ben to my school - such as it was. Alfa and Oriel were older than him, Coolah and Corey were the same age, and just a week before Ben arrived a 10 year old boy who only went by the name Staz arrived as an orphan. None of the other kids had received training before, unsurprisingly, and luckily they weren’t as powerful as Ben or I are but they still needed a lot of training and attention.  Especially Staz. Staz was terrified when he first arrived, and I see now I might have neglected Ben upon his arrival because even though he was quiet and unhappy with being sent away from home, I didn’t consider Ben a risk towards the other students. I knew what kind of control he had and I thought maybe he would rather have time to adjust on his own._

_We didn’t have calendars at the school, but after what might have been a few weeks Staz was finally adjusting and making friends with the other students. But Ben was still hiding himself away in his room and didn’t join us for mealtimes. The other kids seemed hesitant to approach him when he was around, and I heard them whispering among each other about how there was a lot of thumping coming from Ben's room, as thought he was dropping heavy books on the floor. When I asked Ben about it in private he expressed confusion and said he didn’t know what I was talking about._

_During lessons Ben often seemed bored. I was teaching the other children about mediation and control; things that Ben already excelled in. I felt bad, because I knew why he was bored, but I couldn’t skip the basics with the other students. So I asked Ben if he would rather do his chores while I taught the rest of the students, and I could tutor him later in the day. He argued the usefulness of doing the chores when he was there to learn how to better control the force. I tried to explain that it was not only necessary to live at the school, but that it helped with patience. He didn’t seem impressed; but for a time he did them anyway. Then he would stop, and would spend his days in the surrounding woods and traversing the rocky terrain; I didn’t worry too much about his safety at the time because Leia had told me he did that at home. But I should have known better. I never forgot who I cremated out there, but_    _ ~~I didn't think~~_

_~~I didn’t realize~~ _

_Ben couldn't have been with me for much more than a few years before the other students finally approached me with complaints that he was aggressive towards them. He was the only student who I had been saber-training and at first I was afraid that he was using that knowledge to abuse the other students. I knew sometimes, when they had their free time, that the other students like to swing branches at each other like they were fighting in the war. I hadn't ever seen Ben involved in that, but I wasn't always watching._

_It was much worse, he was apparently lashing out at them, and used the force to pin his fellow students to the wall, or to crush their things. Alfa, the oldest boy, even claimed Ben had force-choked him and said that Ben promised to do worse if they told on him. I had hoped the children were exaggerating. Ben was the best in the class, it wasn't outrageous to imagine them singling him out; I thought maybe they didn’t understand how extreme what they were telling me was. I was foolish._

_When I confronted Ben about it his face twisted in a rage I didn’t think boys his age were able to feel; he said the other students said he wasn't being trained properly, that I was coddling him and that he was faking it, that he cheated with the force, that he should have just stayed at home and let his mom deal with him. I tried to tell him that the other students were just frustrated that their own abilities weren’t as impressive or as developed, that they were unfairly taking it out on him. He told me that I should be 'a better teacher if the other kids are just jealous of his gift'. I told him that hurting the other students in retaliation didn’t make him any better than them. He screamed and force-pushed me out of the way to storm out of the school. I was too stunned to follow him right away. When he used the force on me it felt so similar to being attacked by dark enforcers that I wasn't sure what to do about it. I had no one to ask for direction, there was no one left who knew anything more than I did about the force and its opposing sides._    _ ~~I aban~~_    _ ~~I left~~_

 _I didn’t see Ben for several weeks, but I could feel his presence nearby through the force. I thought to give him time, I thought to let him calm down before approaching. I know now I was afraid of what I would find._    _ ~~If I had just gone looking for him maybe~~_ _I knew Ben had returned when I felt a disturbance in the force and I found him force-choking Alfa by the well. The rest of the students were in the kitchen, preparing our midday meal, and came to see what was going on when they heard me yell._

_I had to physically distract Ben to get him to stop; I don’t remember much of what happened. I remember ordering the other students to take Alfa inside, he was still breathing but unconscious. I remember being terrified when I saw Vader's melted helmet still covered in ashes and dirt in Ben’s hand. I remember yelling at him, and him yelling at me.  I wanted to know why Ben would think it was alright to use the force for such things; I had been telling him all along it led down a dark path. But he wouldn’t answer, and I was afraid and I tried to enter his thoughts to get the answers. Ben felt me trying to enter his mind, he must have, I felt evil in him and then I was digging myself out of the rubble of the school, and there was fire and-_

"-mother teaching you how to use the force?"

Luke’s trembling voice on the holovid pulled Hux's attention away from the journal. It looked as though the holocam was floating near the ceiling but was still recording the three people in the kitchen of whatever house Ben Solo grew up in. Ben was grinning up at the camera but the grin fell when he turned his attention back to his uncle.

"No." Ben muttered, staring at his knees "I thought you would be proud."

Luke frowned and looked at Han, who shrugged in reply.

"Do you want to be a Jedi, Ben?" Luke asked gently.

Ben shook his head but didn't otherwise respond. The confusion on Luke’s face etched itself deeper.

"What do you want to be when you’re older?"

When Ben doesn't reply Luke reaches out to put a comforting hand on the boys shoulder. Before the Jedi can reach him, however, Ben slaps the hand away and the camera crashes to the floor, ending the vid.

 

Hux sits back in his chair, too stunned to realize that the shock is evident on his face. Thankfully he is in his own quarters and nobody can enter without his permission; so when there is a knock at his door he has time to school his features – and to grab his uniform shirt and put it back on – before answering.

"There has been a summons from Supreme Leader Snoke, sir." Lieutenant Mitaka tells him, "He will be ready to receive you for a meeting in twenty minutes, sir."

Hux frowns and dismisses Mitaka, returning to his quarters to redress properly as quickly as possible and cursing Snoke’s bad timing the entire way.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

 Hux stood at parade rest in the Finalizers hangar bay with Captain Phasma to his left and a group of her best stormtroopers acting as an introduction committee. It felt unnecessary; it  _was_  unnecessary. Kylo Ren certainly wouldn’t appreciate it - if he deigned to notice it at all. But it was  _customary_  and Hux would be damned before he let that man have a single thing to be justifiably miffed about aboard his ship.

When Hux had entered the holochamber over a week ago Snoke hadn’t been interested in Hux’s progress or findings at all. The Supreme Leader had immediately listed off a set of co-ordinates and told Hux that Kylo Ren would be joining him, once again, aboard the Finalizer. Hux had still been rather tetchy about the cold shoulder he had been receiving and asked why.

That meeting could have gone a lot worse for Him. Thankfully instead of having him killed for insubordination Snoke had merely treated Hux to a little speech about how the General was only allowed to maintain his position due to Snoke’s generosity and a non-subtle threat about the vaguely painful consequences Hux would suffer if he were to question orders again. Hux did as he usually did when faced with such promises; suppressed any feelings they stirred and didn’t outwardly react.

He was still seething over receiving no acknowledgment for taking initiative and finding a place where Luke Skywalker had not only been, but a place that the Jedi Master had left  _notes_. Based on the mildly surprised expression on Snoke’s face he hadn’t been expecting them to find anything at all; proof that this was a pointless project from the very beginning.

And now, as the shuttle carrying Kylo Ren docked in the hanger, General Hux was forced to trade all the evidence they had found of Luke’s presence on that damned moon for a man who was just as likely to destroy his ship as help them find anything more. And why? Because Snoke apparently had better data analysts at his Citadel than Hux had aboard the Finalizer. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Supreme Leader was taking the Intel Officers – including the droid – which Hux had tasked with examining the data, ‘because they are familiar with it.’

This entire scenario was a joke. The Supreme Leader had apparently lost all sense when Starkiller Base was destroyed; now instead of having direct access to any information Skywalker’s notes and holodiscs contained, Hux was to go back to the moon where it was found and Kylo was supposed to wave his hands in the air and sense where to go from there.

Hux once again found himself practicing breathing techniques as the loading ramp on the Upsilon-Class shuttle lowered. It wasn’t Kylo’s personal shuttle; no that was gathering dust in a dark corner of the hangar bay. Hux briefly wondered if this was the shuttle that had carried a still healing Kylo Ren from the Finalizer and into Snoke’s hands before wiping the thought from his mind; he wasn’t allowed to keep the damned thing anyway.

When the ramp settled Kylo Ren and a single stormtrooper descended, the trooper followed Kylo Ren from a safe distance and Hux wondered if there were corpses of other troopers to be found and disposed of and made a mental note to have someone check before the shuttles departure. Those troopers may not be under his direct command, but they were still his men and he would not allow Kylo Ren to murder them at his leisure.

As Kylo approached Hux was surprised to find that the other man less imposing than the he was accustomed to. Kylo carried himself the same way he used to despite the barely noticeable limp that Hux figured stemmed from the abdominal wound he left the Finalizer with. The helmet was gone but the hood of his cowl was up and still dangling in a ratty mess about his shoulders. The outer robe was present but appeared to be new, it settled around his ankles instead of pooling on floor about his feet and looked like it was made of gaberwool; the same material Hux’s greatcoat was made from. The robe had a smoother texture than the old one and managed to make Kylo appear less…crude. But other than the robe and the smaller belt holding it together he couldn’t detect much of a reason behind the knight’s diminished presence. Even the facial scarring was barely noticeable, especially with the hood up; merely a narrow pink line bisecting his cheek, tapering off just over the bridge of his nose and ending on a point between the two eyebrows. 

It wasn’t until Kylo Ren was standing directly in front of him that Hux realized what was missing from the ensemble. He wasn’t wearing the padded armour that used to add an inch or two to his overall bulk. The presence of the armour used to give the impression that Kylo Ren was ready for battle at a moment’s notice; instead he wore a wrist-length, black linen shirt that did nothing to protect his neck and standard black pants tucked into his boots.

When the Knight pulled down his hood and Hux got a good look at his face he realized his initial assessment was wrong. Kylo Ren was still imposing; but now it was all in his eyes. Hux hadn’t seen the man without his mask very often before but his eyes had always been dancing with expression; usually rage, sometimes sorrow. Now they were dead. Black, sunken pools that seemed to absorb and destroy the life around them. This close Hux didn’t even notice the scar, despite being aware of its presence; he was so put off by the eyes.

“General.” Kylo greeted and wasn’t that a change. Hux had been expecting a demand or two before Kylo strode off to do something foolish.

"Kylo Ren without his mask, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I do not need it. You know our mission.”

“Concise as always,” Hux frowned, “And what-”

Kylo cuts him off by waving the stormtrooper following him towards the Intel officers standing awkwardly around the carts and droid they would be departing with.

“We leave as soon as possible.” Kylo informed him before striding passed and deeper into the ship.

 _No, I thought we would just twiddle our thumbs for the next four months, Kylo._  Hux thought as he left the hanger; _he hasn’t actually changed at all. Fantastic._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A [mood board](http://dracadancer.tumblr.com/post/143012624410/first-steps-mood-board-by-couronnebead-not) has been made for this story by [dracadancer](http://dracadancer.tumblr.com/). It's spoiler free.  
> Join me on [Tumblr](http://crownbeed.tumblr.com/)  
> Want to share this story on Tumblr? [Click Here](http://crownbeed.tumblr.com/post/148506262998/first-steps)


	2. Chapter 2

The last time Hux had asked Phasma to dinner they had been on their way to Starkiller Base for the last time and had made plans to share another dinner on base after the successful use of the super-weapon. It was a foolish thing to plan as neither of them had any way of knowing just when Hux would even have the  _time_ to attend a private dinner. There would have been officer parties, meetings with diplomats trying to protect their own systems, meetings to approve of necessary defense tactics and offensive measures, meetings so he knew what the remnants of the Resistance were doing, if they were still possibly a threat. General Hux wouldn’t have been able to truly celebrate in his own way until he was alone with Phasma.

Clearly that private dinner never took place.

Phasma was perceptive; she knew him well and in the seven months since the Starkiller base was destroyed he rarely saw her alone at all. He was afraid she would point out his failures or ask to be stationed somewhere her talents would be more useful. He was afraid if he spent too long in her non-armoured presence she would notice his self-control waning and pity him. Her respect had not been easy to earn: he didn’t really want to know if he lost it.

He shouldn’t have been worried.

Hux was already in the private room off of the officer’s lounge when Captain Phasma knocked on the door. She was wearing the generic, black uniform that was common on the Finalizer; the band that identified her as a captain was the only adornment on her person. As usual she looked mildly uncomfortable to be outside of her armour and walking through the halls where people could see her. She told him once that she preferred her men to see her as relatable to them as she could be and the armour helped with that; she felt that walking about in her uniform enforced the idea that she was above them or otherwise not a soldier. He still didn’t understand why she felt that was a bad thing but resigned himself to never completely understanding her. How she conducted herself worked well and so long as it continued to do so he wouldn’t complain.

He still preferred to avoid the clanking whilst eating and chatting though; it was distracting.

“General Hux, it's been a while.” Phasma’s lips curled up slightly, the only physical sign he usually received that she was pleased to see him, “I'd almost started to believe you were cross with me.”

“Of course not.” He assured her as they sat.

Phasma hummed, “There was the reassessment-”

Hux frowned, “You know why that was necessary; you agreed to it.”

“I did, I still do.” She admitted, “However you did start hiding yourself away afterwards”

“Are you implying I've been slacking at my post?”

“No, I'm saying you haven’t asked me to dinner in over seven months and if you aren’t working you are alone in your rooms…probably working.” Phasma snorts and begins putting ration portions on her plate.

“Lonely?”

“Of course”

Hux chuckled, “I noticed you finally got the armour deep cleaned.  _Eau de trash_  didn’t suit you.”

“I thought I was pulling it off rather well,” she deadpanned, “So what did u want to know?”

Hux’s eye’s snapped up to meet hers, “Pardon?”

“It’s been seven months General and we reach the system that the abandoned storage facility resides in tomorrow. I do not think it coincidence that you asked to meet with me tonight after all this time has passed.”

Hux narrows his eyes at her and takes his time chewing before replying, “I hate you sometimes, Phasma.”

Phasma practically grinned, “Of course you do; you wouldn’t keep me so close if you didn’t. Regardless, you want to know what it is I’ve heard on my rounds, don’t you?”

“I admit to being lax in that regard as of late; the bridge officers seem alright although there is more confusion and speculation going on regarding the Supreme Leader’s plans than I care to hear. I assume it has been much the same on the rest of the ship. Looking into it when I don’t have answers myself seemed redundant.”

Sitting back in her seat and placing her hands in her lap Phasma regarded him coolly. “You haven’t just been lax, sir. You’ve been negligent. Even before we were sent to retrieve Kylo Ren you were quiet during daily meetings, you get distracted easily, you don’t monitor progress or reports that you used to pore over during every second of your spare time. You barely give any feedback, positive or negative, to the officers on deck. Some people say you barely speak at all unless it’s to give orders and rumour has it that if it is very quiet on deck everyone can hear you grinding your teeth.”

Phasma looked pointedly at the white knuckled grip he had on his fork and Hux dropped it as though he had been burned. He pushed his plate away and placed his face in his hands, reminding himself that ripping his hair out was counterproductive and would only showcase to Phasma how badly his famed self-control was slipping.

“Do you do anything but relive the losses we sustained at Starkiller base anymore?” Phasma asked, “I heard you stopped correcting the quartermaster’s weekly projected rationing rates and resupply costs. You used to  _enjoy_  doing that despite how badly it frustrated the poor woman.”

 _Because every time I think of an equation or look at a series of numbers, I want to put my fist through a wall._  Hux thought bitterly.

“I’m not wallowing, if that is what you are suggesting, Captain. I have simply seen little to correct, I-”

“Pardon my language,  _sir_ , but I call bullshit.”

Hux dropped his hands and glared at her, “Careful, Phasma.”

“Don’t pretend like you would risk demoting me, Hux. No one else will tell you how idiotic you're being; you're floundering and you need to stop before you lose everything you have left. We all lost something when Starkiller went down, but you need to move on. It can’t be fixed and there is nothing left to salvage from it anymore. You haven’t even updated the battle simulations for your damned automated training regimes; you’ve never gone more than two months before tweaking it. My men are growing complacent with them; you know no one else is as creative when it comes to them as you are. They aren’t even making mistakes despite the tension Kylo Ren’s presence on board has been causing. And they always used to make mistakes, at least at first, when he was ar-”

“What is Kylo Ren doing that is causing so much tension?” Hux interrupted; glad to latch onto something that didn’t directly relate to his own shortcomings and failures.

Phasma was red in the face from her rant, but she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly before replying, “Nothing obvious. He hasn’t broken anything in a fit of rage; he’s relatively calm compared to how he was before…”

“But?”

“He’s…creepy, for lack of a better term. He used to walk with a heavy tread but now he’s practically gliding silently through the halls. Most people don’t hear him coming and then suddenly he’s walking by them without a word. If he’s in a quiet hall and someone drops something or makes a loud noise he twitches as though bracing himself for an explosion. Everybody is waiting for him to have a meltdown and start killing everyone on board. Why do you look so surprised? You’ve been staring at him during almost every morning meeting since he’s been back; he’s twitchy then too.”

“I’ve not noticed it being as bad as you’re describing. He’s usually impersonating a statue and staring at a spot in the center of the table. When there are arguments he seems to subtly fold in on himself though. I agree that he is twitchy; when Jenkins tossed that datapad on the table this morning Kylo looked like he was terrified and confused for several seconds before he went back to his new zombie-like norm.”

Phasma’s eyebrows had slowly risen while Hux spoke, till she chuckled and he refocused his attention on her “I notice you didn’t deny staring at him, General. Is his face truly so fascinating?”

Hux scowled, “I’ve been keeping a close eye on him when he is in view; you said yourself he’ll probably end up having a meltdown. If possible I would like to see it coming.”

“Of course, Hux. You are ever so pragmatic; this has nothing to do with the scar, I’m sure.”

Hux rolled his eyes and pulled his plate back to himself; if she was teasing him maybe he could eat without feeling like he was being scolded by his father.

“Why would I care about his scar? It’s barely even noticeable.” He asked between bites.

“You sound disappointed!” Phasma laughed, actually laughed, “Scarred men are your type, Hux! They have  _always_  been your type!”

“They do not always- I don’t have a type Phasma!” Hux sputtered, “When was the last time I even had time for such indulgences? And how would you know? When have you ever met someone I’ve been…intimate with?”

“You seem to forget that I attended the same school you did.”

“Perhaps, but we weren’t even acquaintances. Why would you pay attention to who I was with?”

“You were the only son of the Commandant; I had considered securing my favour with him by befriending you. Turns out I didn’t have to but regardless, I used to catch you making eyes at Walter Lyle until he left, then Robby Vickery. Then Glen Stetson came along and you were practically eye-fucking each other across the dining hall every day.” Phasma grinned.

Hux gaped at her for several seconds before groaning, mortified that she could remember any of their names; much less bring them up. And Glen, he hadn’t thought of him in 17 years. Hux couldn’t even think of Stetson without tasting copper salt and feeling the flames of betrayal. Not that Phasma knew anything about that.

“I didn’t make eyes at anyone and I certainly didn’t fuck anybody with them. Across the dining hall or otherwise.”

She hummed, “Of course not. I’m just saying your tastes run towards the tall, dark and vicious. What’s a better sign of being vicious than a scar or two from battles won?”

“Good lord, can we go back to talking about how strange Kylo Ren is? I enjoyed that topic much more.”

Phasma chuckled again, “Of course, General. By all means, let’s talk all about him.”

“That’s not…” Hux sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Does he seem like a threat to the crew? Do you think exposure without incident will help the crew re-adjust to his presence?”

“It might make them more comfortable but I’m not sure what it would mean for him. For as long as I’ve been stationed at the same facilities as him he’s always been volatile. This new Kylo Ren is too different and he came here directly from the Citadel. How do we know he won’t fall to pieces now that he’s out from under the thumb of Supreme Leader Snoke?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of happening,” Hux admitted, “his unreliability was reliable, before. Now he’s so silent and so still that I cannot predict his actions. He doesn’t even make snide comments while attending meetings anymore. Has he spoken to anyone?”

Phasma shook her head, “No more than a few minor orders. He doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything aside from pacing the ship. He doesn’t have meals delivered to his rooms but the kitchen staff say they haven’t seen him either. He hasn’t even been to the gym. Logic dictates he must eat, sleep and shower but no one knows when or where. His rooms appear untouched and he’s been seen wandering at every time of the day. The few times I’ve run into him while patrolling he’s never really seemed mentally present.”

Hux frowned and tried to squash a surge of feeling he had thought long dead; concern for an individual other than himself. He cared for Phasma, but he knew she could handle herself; he didn’t concern himself with her safety because there was nothing to be concerned about. She was in complete control of herself and her men; she was swift in battle, methodical, pragmatic and intelligent. Kylo Ren however was everything she was not. He was a man with an incomprehensible power at his fingertips that allowed him to destroy things without even touching them. And now Kylo appeared more broken than he ever had before; it was disconcerting.

_What did Snoke do to him?_

Pulling himself from his thoughts Hux stood and put his unfinished meal into the trash and the dishes into the cleaning receptacle.

“Well Captain, perhaps being in the field tomorrow will get him back to normal.” He smirked, “It was nice speaking with you, I won’t wait so long before the next time.”

Phasma stood as well and shook his hand firmly, “You'd best not. Don’t think I’m not aware you directed conversation to focus on Kylo Ren. We will be speaking about how you are dealing with the loss of Starkiller in the future, General.”

_Dammit._

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Hux hadn’t allowed himself much time to ruminate over what he had learned about the kid that grew up to become Kylo Ren. He was too angry after the conference with Snoke; then he was too confused and… _ugh_ , passively concerned by the new version of Kylo Ren stalking around his ship to even remember it. But now they were almost to the co-ordinates of Luke Skywalker’s last known location and he couldn’t sleep.

He would rather bathe in acid than think about his own failures and shortcomings. And so here he was; lying in bed, face squished into his pillow like it usually was while he slept. Picturing Kylo Ren’s stupid scarred face and his stupid angry face from before and comparing it to his stupid kid face.

Why was he so different? The child described in Skywalker’s notes sounded much more like the Kylo Ren from before the Starkiller incident than the Kylo Ren on board his ship now. Hux wasn’t surprised at all to learn that Ben Solo was once a moody child who overreacted to everything that didn’t go his way; that Ben Solo had a habit of being secretive and difficult. What could have happened to Kylo Ren in seven months under Snoke’s direction that didn’t happen during the several years after Kylo Ren destroyed Skywalker’s Jedi School?

He wouldn’t know unless he asked and he had no desire to do that. Although Kylo might just decapitate him if he did. That was something he ought to store away for desperate circumstances. It pays to have back-up plans after all.

Hux found himself wondering if the reason he found Kylo’s new persona so disorienting was because he had, to a degree, expected to find himself facing someone he had a greater understanding of; even if he still thought Kylo Ren was a child in a man’s body.

He could certainly understand what it was like to have a parent so involved in their work that they were never home. Hux could barely remember his father as anything more than an instructor; he was a man known for being charming and charismatic in public but at home he expected perfection and punished anything that might be seen as a weakness. Cultivating a strong familial bond between family members was one such weakness. Hux hadn’t understood this at first; he thought he wasn’t good enough to receive his father’s attention, he thought his mother only loved him when his father was away because she loved Hux Senior more. His early successes in school were due more to the desire to be seen and adored by his parents than by any real desire to succeed.

It wasn’t until his father explained the principles and theory behind the Arkanis Academy cadet programs that Hux realized he was expected to be an exceptional example of this philosophy. Hux agreed with the premise of the program and saw for himself its success but he did not approve of such teachings being turned on him. He had no desire to be a common soldier; his intelligence would be better applied in command or research. It was then he truly began to resent his father.

The old man should never have ensured his son was such a good shot. He  _definitely_  shouldn’t have drawn Hux’s mother’s blood.

Hux’s chest vibrated with a growl as he thought of his father and he pushed those memories away; choosing instead to recall General Organa speaking of her child. He thought he could recall playing with a toy similar to what Organa claimed the stranger had given Ben. Such toys were common among students at the academy. He knew them as Rubik’s cubes and they generally fell apart upon solving the puzzle, revealing the middle cube that contained a prize of some sort. He had gotten a coin, a leather bracelet and a small toy car before he gave them up as a waste of time.

Absently he found himself wondering if 4 year old Ben Solo ever solved it and what he got.

Hux had a suspicion that Snoke might have given the toy to Ben Solo or ordered it delivered to the boy. He didn’t understand much in the ways of the force or how it worked but when Supreme Leader Snoke first contacted him it had been in the form of a written summons and a plaque to commemorate his achievement with the oscillator. He had kept the plaque on his disk for a time but it made him uncomfortable. He knew it was foolish but it made him feel like he was being observed, it made it difficult to sleep the few hours he allowed himself to. The plaque eventually ended up in an incinerator; he felt much better after that and Snoke never mentioned it. He had forgotten about the entire incident until recently. But then, until recently he had more important thing to consider.

Now that he compared what he had found in Skywalker’s notes to what he had experienced himself with the plaque it became glaringly obvious that the Supreme Leader must have been involved with the toy. Ben Solo must have been singled out simply because of his parentage if he hadn’t started showing signs of sensitivity to the force till he was 9 years old. And Snoke had been speaking inside his head the entire time? Was Snoke inside Kylo Ren’s head right now?

Hux turned over to glare at the ceiling.  _It doesn’t seem like anybody is inside Kylo Ren’s mind anymore._

Snoke must have spent decades conditioning Ben Solo, Hux couldn’t imagine what kind of impact that would have on a developing mind. But then, he supposed he didn’t really have to. The Kylo Ren that Hux had known for the last few years was a mess. A capable fighter, strong in the force – whatever that really meant – but the man lacked any ability to deal with his emotions without throwing them all over the place and damaging everything within reach.

What did Snoke even want Kylo Ren for? Why teach him how to use the force and fight like a beast just to send him chasing after a ghost? Why not teach him control over his emotions as well? What use was a deadly warrior that threw tantrums and made everyone else’s job more difficult and less effective? Grooming someone to be powerful without also instilling a sense of impulse control was like trying to use a star system destroying super-weapon without a  _functioning fucking oscillator._  Everything goes to shit in a spectacularly grandiose fashion.

Hux had seen Kylo fight; the force-user was a super-weapon in his own right. Kylo Ren was an under-utilized war machine that could no doubt destroy the Resistance in a single breath. But he was a mess and now he was barely even present. What kind of leader did it make Snoke if he breaks his toys before sending them out to play and then destroys them for being broken?

Hux believed wholeheartedly in the unification of the Galaxy, in the golden age of peace and prosperity that could come from unity and strict laws under a single governing body. But he was seriously starting to question the Supreme Leader’s intentions with the First Order.

Hux groaned and grabbed his datapad to look at the time. Then he groaned louder and slid out of bed. They would reach their destination within the next two hours; he figured he might as well get up and get his day started.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Five days later Hux retracted every sympathetic or complimentary thought he had ever had regarding Kylo Ren. The Finalizer hadn’t even settled in their co-ordinates before Kylo had dusted off his personal shuttle and left for the ruins. If it hadn’t been for the ruckus his departure caused in the control room Hux wasn’t entirely certain anybody would have known.

Hux had immediately hailed the shuttle over comms and when Kylo  _finally_  answered Hux calmly explained why protocol was important to military operations. He used the smallest words he could think of to inform Kylo how incredibly important having a guard detail was, especially whilst visiting a planet that may yet contain unknown and aggressive species. He explained why leaving the shuttle bay and having an unauthorized take off put several lives in danger and risked the structural integrity of the ship.

To which Kylo replied, “I can protect myself, General. I will let you know when we are done here.”

Hux rarely drank outside of military galas and the like but there was a bottle of what he was assured was very expensive Corellian whiskey in his rooms. Over the next five days he strongly considered finding out how much of it he needed to drink before he vomited. Perhaps if he passed out he would finally be able to sleep.

His irritation grew so steadily that the crew of his ship started to keep their distance. General Hux had never been known to break his stoic exterior but even he had to admit that the past year had put a mounting pressure on his shoulders; seeing the way his men steered away from him in the hallways and ever so subtly leaned away from him when he was near made him feel like he was fraying at the edges.

Hux was tired of waiting to receive real orders, he was tired of his successes hinging on the efforts of a petulant man-child and he was growing really rather angry about risking his ship by keeping it in one position in the middle of unknown space; parked precariously close to an asteroid field no less.

Really the only reasonable response was to go fetch Kylo Ren himself.

And that was how he found himself trekking through a fetid forest with pistol in hand and a long range rifle strapped to his back; regretting all of his decisions. His boots were ruined, he might be able to salvage his coat but he had strong suspicions that it would take several intense cleaning treatments before it stopped smelling like decomposing foliage.

Luckily the abandoned facility was really rather dry - once one managed to find the small bit of it that wasn’t rubble and dust.

“A tad hypocritical to come after me without a guard, don't you think, General?”

Hux would never admit to making any noise when that voice echoed like toxic smoke down the hall leading to the room Luke Skywalker had once taken refuge in.

He willed his heart rate to slow down and forced his muscles to relax as he strode confidently towards the room, barely acknowledging the feeling of wrongness as he stepped through the doorway to stand in front of Kylo Ren.

Kylo Ren sitting in a corner of the relatively empty room holding his legs to his chest and hiding his face in his knees, no less.

"What is the point of this Kylo,” Hux demanded, “what are you even supposed to be looking for? Where Skywalker went next? Who the fuck cares? Why the fuck does Snoke want us to find Skywalker so badly? Is he even still missing?" When Hux received no response he tries to kick Kylo in the hip but Kylo snatches his ankle, nearly sending Hux toppling onto the floor. "Let go of me-"

"I killed my father" Ren says so quietly that Hux has to repeat what he said several times in his head to understand the individual words and the meaning behind them.

Hux recalls Han Solo teaching his son to braid a wookiee’s hair on his birthday so he wouldn’t cry but pushes the image and emotions it invokes in him away to snarl "good for you, did you get a cookie?"

Kylo snorts derisively and let’s go of Hux’s ankle. If he notices Hux stumble back and nearly fall on the bed he doesn’t say anything but he does finally raise his head and Hux can't hide his confusion.

The General had seen Kylo Ren display several emotions during their acquaintance – most commonly rage - but Hux had never before seen evidence of the knight having cried. Hux couldn’t quite stop the pang of relief he felt at seeing those red-rimmed eyes express an emotion; sadness was easier to comprehend than the dullness that had been there since the Finalizer picked the man up.

“Did you get one when you killed yours?” Kylo asked.

Hux’s instinctive reaction was one of denial; his mother had taught him that if no proof exists of an unsavoury deed then you must pretend as though it never happened until you have convinced yourself and everyone around you that it didn’t. That philosophy didn’t work so well for Hux; he still knew exactly how his father died.

But Kylo seemed genuine in his curiosity and Hux appeared to be turning rather plebeian when the only response he could come up with was “Cookie rations were difficult to come by,” instead of something more along the lines of  _what makes you think I killed him?_ _Or_ _Shut up and answer my questions._

Kylo’s brow furrowed with confusion, “…what?”

Hux sighed, exasperated with both his inconsistent emotions and his inability to ignore them. He tested the bed, decided it was still stable enough, leaned his rifle against the wall and then dropped onto it to stare at the ceiling.

“Is that what you’ve been doing down here? Thinking about patricide?” he asked, failing to hide his sudden exhaustion.

“Do you truly think I’ve been wasting my time down here? Do you think I’ve been viewing this as some sort of vacation? Let me assure you that this entire experience has been anything but” Kylo snapped, his temper flaring for the first time since he came back from his training with Snoke - although the air didn’t thicken with unchecked rage like it once did.

“Then why is it taking so long?” Hux asked, calm in the face of Kylo’s rage.

Kylo didn’t respond for several minutes and Hux’s mind settled into a fog. He was almost asleep when Kylo Ren’s voice interrupted the silence, the rage gone from it once again.

“Skywalker was here for a very long time,” Kylo began quietly, “and he was very emotional while present. I have been trying to get passed the lingering presence of Captain Phasma and her men as well as sift through all the turmoil Skywalker left to get to something useful.”

Hux turned to look at Kylo, “The force can do that? Recall decades old memories in a certain place?”

Kylo rolled his eyes, “It’s not like watching a vid, General. Strong emotions often leave an imprint on their surroundings, although the imprints can be overwritten by more recent emotions or events. Phasma was incredibly put off by the force-warding Skywalker left on the rooms’ perimeter.”

“Understandably.”

“Mm.”

“How much longer should this take?” Hux asked.

Kylo smirked, “Somewhere to be, General?”

“I seem to recall having clear goals for the Resistance that need tending to.” Hux grumbled.

Kylo sighed, “You are tired. Sleep and maybe I’ll have found something you can use by the time you awaken.”

“You are being disturbingly accommodating.”

“Are you complaining?”

“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, really. Do you plan to kill me while I’m sleeping?”

Kylo snorts, “If I wanted you dead I wouldn’t need to wait for you to be asleep.”

“How comforting,” Hux mutters as he turns over on the small bed to face the wall despite his voiced misgivings. He falls asleep to the sound of Kylo Ren’s rhythmic breathing surrounding him in the small room.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

When Hux wakes up he feels more clear-headed than he has in a long time. Although, admittedly, not nearly as clearheaded as was once common for him. He immediately questions his sanity in sleeping with his back to a man known for being irrational and murderous sitting not three feet away. Hux could admit to himself that he was stagnating without applying himself to crushing the Resistance and spreading the First Order’s rule; it was much harder to accept that his intense levels of self-control and sense of self-preservation had slipped to the point that he was now entrusting a psychopath to watch his back while he slept.

Frowning Hux turns back around to find Kylo Ren sitting in the same spot as earlier with his head leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed.

Without his armour the long lines of Ren’s neck were exposed and Hux couldn’t stop himself from following the straining muscles with his eyes or following the knight’s adam’s apple as it bobbed when he swallowed. Hux wondered how easy Ren bruised, how hard would he have to bite before he was told to stop, how smooth that pale skin would feel under his fingertips, how-

_I am legitimately losing my mind._

Hux squeezes his eyes shut and pretends that entire train of thought derailed before it even got started. When he opens them again Kylo is staring at Skywalker’s desk, his eyes nearly completely dull again, although a spark of some emotion still remained. Hux couldn’t place it.

“I had thought for a very long time that I had killed my uncle.” Kylo Ren tells him quietly. “It wasn't until a few years ago that I was informed differently.”

Hux frowns “Is this relevant to what you have found?”

Ren shrugged, “Not particularly. You found holodiscs here; do you know what they contained?”

Hux hesitated, not wanting Kylo Ren to know he watched several vids of him as a child. Convincing himself that Kylo had no reason to believe that he watched the videos himself he says “Some of them.”

“Then you know what Skywalker was doing here.”

“I have an idea.” Hux replies slowly. He reminds himself why he was even in this room with Kylo In the first place “How much longer is this going to take?”

“I don’t know.”

"So what, exactly, was the purpose of the 210 sleep cycles you spent training with the Supreme Leader."

Kylo muttered to himself, quietly enough that Hux couldn’t understand his words

"What?" he snaps, frustration creeping up on him again.

Kylo stands, though only a few inches taller than Hux he still seems to loom like a shadow in the small room. "Nothing, return to your shuttle, General. I will be done here in 24 hours, if there was any intent on a singular destination left in this room I will find it by then."

Hux stands, grabbing his rifle and preparing to leave he scowls “if I have to come back here I’m bringing a flamethrower and setting you on fire.”

Kylo chuckles; in the small room it almost sounded like thunder, "So you promise?" he smirks before subtly shaking his head and hiding any amusement he might have been feeling.

 _Did Kylo Ren just tease me?_  Hux hid his confusion beneath a deeper scowl before turning on his heel and leaving.

Hux realizes on his way back to his shuttle what Kylo had said when he had muttered to himself.

_"I didn’t realize I was gone so long"_

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Less than 12 hours after Hux returned to the Finalizer Kylo Ren delivered on his promise; he even radioed ahead to inform the crew of his impending arrival and  _asked_  for Hux to meet him on the bridge. His consideration was unnerving and served to cement the fact that he and Kylo Ren might have had a  _moment_  on that moon.

According to Kylo Skywalker had left the system in a hurry; and although he admitted to being unable to determine the cause he was able to ascertain the Jedi’s destination was a planet called Reecee.

Reecee was the only planet in the Reecee system and was disturbingly close to the colonies and most notably, Coruscant. Coruscant once served as the Galactic Capital and it was where the New Republic had originally run their government, before the senate decided that all worlds would have an equal say; then Coruscant became one of many planets around the galaxy that hosted the Republic’s governing body on a rotating basis. Any human politicians not in the Hosnian system upon its destruction would likely have congregated there.

Hux didn’t relish the idea of being anywhere near that seat of power with only one star-destroy under his command. Resurgent-class or not.

Luckily the chances of Reecee being on Coruscant’s radar were slim. Reecee had become a bit of a watering hole for many of the galaxies less…industrious characters. It was once a part of the New Republic but was conquered during the Yuuzhan Vong war and after their surrender it never truly returned to the New Republic and instead ran under its own rules. There were only three large settlements, each run by a different mayor and was one of many places a person could find illegal goods or deal in some good old fashioned spice trading.

The main problem, of course, was that galactic scumbags or not, the citizens of Reecee wouldn’t take kindly to the presence of the First Order in their airspace. So, the only option was to go incognito.

The first order of business was to secure a ship that wouldn’t stand out in orbit to Reecee and would blend in once they breached atmo. There was one obvious solution.

“We could repurpose your shuttle.” Hux had suggested with a smirk.

Kylo glowered, “You are not repurposing my shuttle.”

“But we could.”

“Do not touch my shuttle, Hux. There are several other Upsilon-class command shuttles aboard this destroyer; use one of them.”

“But-”

“No.”

Hux ended up assigning a small crew of hangar technicians to scratch the black off of an Upsilon shuttle - that, sadly,  _wasn’t_ Kylo Ren’s – to make it look like it had seen a skirmish or two and told them to throw some orange paint on it somewhere. From what Hux had observed all common ships seemed to have an orange panel or some such thing. Kylo hadn’t corrected him so he figured he wasn’t too far off the mark.

“What shall we name it, sir?” the lead technician had asked upon hearing Hux’s request.

“Name it?” Hux questioned.

“It is customary among smugglers to name their ships something identifiable. Besides, we can’t exactly yell ‘get to the upsilon!’ in an emergency.” Kylo explained, his eyes glittering with amusement in the lights of the hangar bay as they focused on the General.

“Why would we be yelling anything?”

Kylo shrugged, still watching.

“So,” the technician continued, “are we not naming it?”

Hux sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “I wouldn’t even know what to name it.”

Kylo’s lips curled up in the corner “we could call it the Great Scourge.”

“Good lord, no.”

“Hmmm, Darth Ship?”

“Seriously?” Hux asked incredulously.

Kylo Ren was definitely teasing him; Hux would have expected such a thing would irritate him, instead he find himself appreciating the small smile adorning the other man’s face.

“Emperor Shuttle?”

“I hate you.”

“Technically it is going to be my ship, I can name it whatever I wish.” Kylo pointed out.

“You best be bringing that ship back and when you do it will  _not_ be titled Darth Shuttle or whatever stupid name you can come up with.” Hux told him.

Kylo narrowed his eyes at the General so the General narrowed his eyes back.

“Malachor?” Kylo finally offered.

Hux sighed loudly, “Whatever, call it Malachor; I’ll just have it painted before anyone respectable finds out.”

“It’s a good name, sir.” The technician told Kylo quietly.

“I know.”

The next step was to commission a few blasters that appeared unique and unaffiliated with the First Order from the armouries gunsmith. Kylo may be able to protect himself with the force, and he had repaired the cracked casing of his lightsaber, but in order to blend in he needed a non-distinctive weapon; whether he used it or not. Kylo hadn’t seemed impressed but had agreed regardless. When Hux tried to get him to go to the launderer to find something that could be turned into a convincing smuggler outfit Kylo had told him it was fine and he needed to calm down.

It wasn’t Hux’s fault that this operation was the most interesting thing to happen in months.

The only remaining issue Hux had with the plan was the number of people doing it.

Kylo had to go; that much was obvious. Luckily Kylo Ren was only recognizable with his helmet and Ben Solo had never been seen as an adult with a scar across his face. Even so Hux was still sceptical when it came to the idea of the other man taking on such a… subtle mission himself and had brought his concerns up several times. Kylo had not been receptive to someone accompanying him; it was during one such argument that their request for a meeting with the Supreme Leader was finally answered.

Hux knew it was presumptuous to make arrangements for an operation that they hadn’t received the go ahead on. He knew he risked wasting not only everyone’s time but also Snoke’s rage. But frankly Hux was sick of his merits going unappreciated; the rage still simmered at his core and that part of him really didn’t care what Snoke thought of his actions. Hux was a strategist who had been given a task, no matter how foolish, and he was going to do what needed to be done to complete it to the best of his ability.

He was mildly concerned about how Ren would react to seeing his tutor again as well. It may have only been a month and a half or so since Ren had been back on board, but he was almost tolerable now – if one ignored the occasional ‘creeping around the ship in the middle of the night’ thing. Which was why Hux had originally postponed messaging the Supreme Leader until they were only a day or so away from Reecee.

If Snoke wished to squander the weapon that was Kylo Ren then all the power to him; Hux wouldn’t let a valuable asset fall apart for some old man’s perverse pleasure.

The problem was Kylo refused to see reason and would not admit that back-up might be necessary.

“I can protect myself, General.” Kylo snapped at him in the morning meeting room just off the bridge of the Finalizer.

“It’s not your ability to come out of a skirmish alive that I’m worried about,” Hux shot back, “I don’t trust your ability to avoid such confrontations in the first place! Furthermore what happens if someone finds you doing your force thing and decides you are a prime target?”

“Would you feel better sending me with a babysitter? Captain Phasma, perhaps? You?”

“I would really rather not be in the line of fire when the shit hits the fan if it’s all the same with you.”

Kylo threw his hands up in exasperation but didn’t say anything more, despite clearly wanting to.

Begrudgingly Hux found himself almost impressed. In the 3 weeks or so since they had left their previous co-ordinates Kylo had started to come out of whatever shell he had been in: that is to say he didn’t come across as inhuman and distant during morning meetings and though he still didn’t participate at least he seemed to follow the conversation. Before the Starkiller incident Kylo rarely attended meetings and when he did he was full of entirely unhelpful commentary about everything. 

If Hux didn’t know any better he would thing Kylo was trying to be  _friendly;_  If not that then accommodating at least. Hux still wasn’t entirely sure what to think about the teasing or camaraderie taking place between them. He elected to ignore it. He also ignored Phasma when she gave him weird looks during morning meetings.

“Sirs,” Lieutenant Mitaka interrupted timidly from the doorway “Supreme Leader Snoke is ready for you in the holochamber.”

Kylo didn’t comment before sweeping out the door, his robe flaring dramatically about his legs. Hux mentally rolled his eyes before thanking Mitaka and following.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

“Since you were so eager to prepare for a mission to Reecee, General Hux, perhaps you should accompany Kylo Ren.”

Hux snapped his eyes up to meet those of the Supreme Leader’s from where he had kept them lowered as he was reprimanded. But before he could say anything in response to the order disguised as a suggestion Kylo’s voice echoed in the chamber.

“I am perfectly capable of carrying out this mission myself, Master.”

“Are you?” Snoke questioned.

Out of the corner of his eye Hux could see Kylo lower his gaze and his eyebrows scrunch together but he did not verbally respond.

“You are dismissed, Kylo Ren.”

Hux didn’t move; he kept his gazed pointed at the right arm of the Supreme Leader's throne. Even so he could sense Kylo pausing minutely in his direction as he turned to leave. Snoke didn’t speak until the door swished closed.

“Do not forget your place in the First Order, General Hux. You follow my orders, not your own.”

Hux clenched his jaw to keep his mouth shut. Snoke paused as though waiting for a response, when he didn’t receive any he continued.

“If you wish to atone for your blunder you will not only accompany Kylo Ren to Reecee; upon your return you will report to me and inform me of any anomalies in Kylo Ren’s behaviour during the mission.”

Hux considered questioning the order, his rage telling him he should; but ultimately decides against it. The Supreme Leader was already displeased with him and Hux really didn’t wish to find out what kind of punishment he would earn for pushing his luck. So he quietly agrees to the order and is dismissed; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to consider an anomaly. As far as he's concerned Kylo Ren has been presenting anomalies and contradictions since he came back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes at the end relate mostly to clothing and food.  
> I promise that will make sense as you read.  
> Also, this is the chapter where the rating changes to Explicit.

Hux had seen rats before, mostly in biology textbooks and the like while he was in the academy, but what he was hunting for was most definitely  _not_  a rat. Possibly. He couldn’t quite decide what it was. It looked like a rat but it was the size of a large house cat, its tail was twice as long as its body and stood straight up in the air when it walked on all fours. Which wasn’t often; they seemed to prefer jumping from tree to tree.

They also appeared in groups and he observed a pack of seven picking berries off of a bush on the third day after their arrival on Reecee and resolved to kill one. If Hux had to watch Ren sitting still as a statue with little spots of sunlight filtering through the trees around him while he meditated for one more moment he was going to shoot himself. So while Ren was working with the force or whatever it was he did Hux was spending his seventh day on Reecee sitting five feet off the ground on a tree branch waiting for one of the long-tailed rat things to approach the pile of berries he had placed 6 yards away.

When Kylo had told him not to worry about clothing he had assumed that the knight would go to the launderer by himself and pick through the lost and found like Hux had ended up doing for his own undercover outfit.

He couldn’t for the life of him decide what led him to be so daft.

Kylo not only had a father who was once a smuggler but Snoke often had him searching planets and following leads to Jedi or Jedi/Sith artefacts. Kylo had his own outfit for operations requiring discretion and he looked damned good in it.

It was a bloody  _travesty_.

It had been two or three years since Hux had had sex, and six or seven since he had had it fairly regularly. He couldn’t even recall the last time he had slept with someone he had genuinely gotten along with. He preferred partners who didn’t speak much, people that he likely wouldn’t see again; people he could reassign, demote or destroy if they tried to use such interactions against him. Such people were in short supply on the Finalizer these days and before Starkiller was destroyed he had been far too distracted by his project and its completion to be bothered by such trivialities.

Those trivialities were rearing their ugly head now and stomping all over whatever sense he had left. He couldn’t make himself concentrate on the damned mission, he couldn’t force himself to focus on Kylo Ren’s ‘safety’ like he was supposed to, and he couldn’t coerce himself into believing that Kylo was the same spoiled brat he always had been and that this ‘friendliness’ taking place between them was out-of-character and not to be trusted.  Not knowing what he knew about Ben Solo and the complicated relationship he had with his long-time ‘master.’

And Hux most certainly couldn’t bring himself to remember how infuriating Kylo Ren used to be when he was out of his black robes and wearing a leather jacket that could very well be just a tad too small for him. The jacket was made of some dark brown leather Hux didn’t recognize and when Kylo’s cowl was thrown over his shoulders - because  _apparently_  the cowl was a part of the damned disguise - the leather hugged the knight’s arms almost like a second skin. It also revealed that Kylo preferred to wear light blue t-shirts with a deep V-neck that showed off a distracting and frankly inconsiderate amount of chest.

Hux figured the cowl might be meant as a way of hiding the bit of skin that showed underneath the shirt and jacket whenever he bent over. Or maybe it was supposed to hide the man’s ass and just how well those tight pants fit him. It did a terrible job either way and Hux cursed both its presence and its ineffectiveness in equal measure. The first time he watched the other man sling on his belt with the holster that attached to his thigh he thought he was going to break his own fingers he clenched them so hard.

Kylo Ren was a beast underneath those robes and it was _infuriating_.

The worst part of the entire ensemble was how normal it made Kylo appear. He was intimidating for being large and fit, not because he wore all black and had a reputation for maintaining an excess of murder and rage. The black of his usual outfit washed out his features but his skin almost looked golden in the sunlight now; the remnants of a youth spent outside. A week ago aboard the Finalizer Hux would have said Kylo’s eyes were black, the simple addition of some color to his wardrobe made it obvious that they were somewhere between dark brown and amber. When the knight had re-boarded the Finalizer two months ago Hux would have been hard-pressed to say Kylo looked like anything other than a corpse, in comparison he looked positively radiant now.

The main problem, however, was much simpler. Instead of the ghostly shadow haunting his ship with the ability to snap a neck with a mere thought Hux couldn’t stop seeing Kylo Ren as just another man. Seeing the power that was Kylo Ren as a human being combined with a growing rapport between them and Hux’s long dry spell had the general positively transfixed with the idea of possessing that body.

Hux shifted his position in the tree whilst pushing his hair off his forehead and frowned at the tightness in his pants. His frown changed into a grimace when he had to readjust himself. His own undercover outfit was noticeably _not_ tailored to flatter his body. He felt like a child playing dress-up. He had ended up rushing to the launderer after the meeting with Snoke and getting several sets of stormtrooper under-armour as he didn’t actually own any clothing that wouldn’t label him as a military man or a member of the First Order.

Luckily the stormtrooper ‘body glove’ didn’t have any notable ‘First Order’ features. Unluckily stormtroopers didn’t often come in the form of ‘tall and disastrously thin despite all efforts to bulk up.’ The pants were a size too big in the waist - he fixed this with a belt - and the shirts were baggy. He was used to his officer uniforms’ thick layers, it was close-fitted but didn’t show off his small frame; therefore clinging to his skin without making him feel, and look, like a twig. The stormtrooper outfit made him look like he was trying, and failing, to hide his size. He felt like he was insulting himself.

He completed the outfit with a shoulder holster for his personal blaster – which looked different enough from regulation blasters that he didn’t think it would matter if anybody saw him wielding it – and a dark beige, non-regulation windbreaker that was in the laundry’s lost and found. He had deliberated with himself for ages before deciding on using a slightly older pair of his own boots instead of a pair that might not fit properly or comfortably – thereby affecting his stance and accuracy while shooting.

Thus far he had managed to avoid looking at his boots the entire week. He had been forced to scuff them and upon boarding the repurposed shuttle Kylo had torn two long strips off of the cape portion of his cowl and told Hux to wrap them around his ankles and un-tuck his pants. Apparently his officer boots were too ‘military’ despite how filthy they looked. Then Kylo had asked if he brought his hair pomade and when he received an affirmative he proceeded to root through Hux’s bag of sleepwear and extra clothes until he found it and threw it into the hangar bay; he closed the door before Hux could retrieve it.

And now ruining his own boots was a waste of time because his hair kept falling onto his forehead and distracting him anyway. Such a nuisance could be potentially fatal in a firefight.

He tried to ignore the strands brushing against his forehead as three long-tailed rats looked at the pile of berries on the ground suspiciously from a nearby tree.

One of the rats finally dropped to the ground and Hux kept it in the sights on his pistol as it approached the berries.

An hour later Hux carried the rat by the base of its tail into the small clearing they had landed the shuttle in. They had chosen to start their time on Reecee in a forest situated east, west  _and_  north of the three largest settlements in an attempt to learn which one Skywalker had likely visited. Hux was surprised to find Kylo not in his usual meditation spot against a tree as he had been during most daylight hours all week.

He hoped they had a new destination, or they were giving up, or even that Kylo was feeling chatty tonight. The entire week, including the shuttle ride over, Kylo hadn’t said much; had barely uttered anything more than monosyllabic words. Initially Hux wanted to blame the silence on Snoke, thinking maybe seeing his master had pushed Kylo back into his shell. But the knight watched Hux the entire time; and where once such attention from Kylo Ren would feel threatening this time it was entangled with what might be curiosity. Kylo watched Hux like he was intrigued.

 _Perhaps he never realized how absolutely fragile I come across as before now_.

Hux snorted at himself derisively; knowing such thoughts to be false. Kylo Ren had once sized him up, found his authority lacking and Hux himself undeserving of respect. Chances were he merely found joy in seeing how right he was.

“What do you intend to do with that?” Kylo asked as he descended the shuttles ramp.

Hux congratulated himself on not jumping at the sudden appearance. “I thought that was rather obvious.” He snapped.

Kylo tilted his head like a curious puppy, “if you plan on eating it you’ll find nothing on board to cook it with and if you build a fire you are likely to burn the entire forest down this time of year.”

“So…what should I do with it?”

Kylo shrugged, “leave it here. Something will find it and eat it.”

“Are we going somewhere?”  _Yes thank you Kylo, I did spend four days waiting to shoot this fucking thing. It was incredibly boring and I don’t even remember how to prepare a mammal for consumption anymore but sure, I’ll just leave this carcass here for another creature._

Hux barely paid any attention to Kylo as he explained where they were going and why. The general pointedly dropped the carcass on Kylo’s preferred meditating spot before joining him on the ship and smiling sardonically at him. “I’m sorry, what was that?” he asked politely.

“We’re going east to one of the settlements and you cannot wear that.”

“You said it was fine when we left the Finalizer!”

“Yes, it is,” Kylo explained calmly, “but no one is going to believe you are somebody who regularly attends such places with that complexion and your hair is going to call attention to you so that they’ll actually notice.”

Hux was seething, “ _you_  tossed my pomade off the shuttle you idiot. I can’t exactly do anything with it now, can I?”

The corner of Kylo’s lip turned up in a barely-there smile before he was pulling his cowl over his head and placing it over Hux’s. For a moment the world went dark as Hux instinctively closed his eyes; when he opened them again he was surrounded by Kylo’s scent and staring at a dark freckle on the knights exposed neck.

Then Kylo was striding towards the cockpit while Hux stared stupidly after him.

 _Dammit_ _all._

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Kylo booked them a room at a cantina with the remnants of a sign that declared it ‘old’s Foam’ with a bar on the main floor and two upper floors dedicated to rentable rooms. Unfortunately the only rooms left were singles but Kylo managed to convince the bartender/receptionist they were dealing with to give them a room with a couch until something better was available. She snorted but agreed.

Hux suspects they will be in the same room for the duration of their stay.

Though small the room is decently sized; with a queen sized bed, the promised couch and a holoscreen connected to the HoloNet on the wall above a small dresser. Everything looked clean but the colors of each piece of furniture clashed with each other and left much to be desired.

Hux’s eyes lock on the doorway to the rooms’ ‘fresher beside the bed and he immediately goes for it; praying to whatever deities are worshiped on this planet that there is a real bathtub. He almost squeals with glee when he finds a combo shower/sonic stall. It’s no bath like he has in his private rooms aboard the Finalizer but after a week of water-free sonic showers on the shuttle he was practically salivating at the idea of having a hot shower. He appreciated the speed and efficiency with which a sonic shower cleaned one’s body but he preferred to only use them when he was running late – they were deeply unsatisfying.

Before he has time to truly consider having a shower immediately Kylo tells him to keep his coat and shoes on. Hux returns to the main room where Kylo is kicking closed the door to a mini-fridge sitting beside the couch.

“Why?” he asks.

“We’re going to go get food.”

Hux frowns, “…why?”

Kylo’s eyebrows rise, “because we have the opportunity to buy real food and I have every intention of doing so?”

“Buy it with what money, precisely?”

Now Kylo is frowning, “the money I brought?”

Hux folds his arms irritably, “I thought that was why we had rations.”

“Why are you so adverse to buying food?”

“I’m not. I just don’t see the point.” Hux says petulantly; realizing a second too late that he wasn’t even trying to hide his discomfort with the idea and cursing himself for it.  _Oh hell, I’m being_ childish _I’m absorbing whatever immature remnants remain in Kylo Ren. Dammit all._

The curses become more venomous when Kylo takes a step closer, inspecting him as though he was a fascinating anomaly.

“Have you...ever had food that wasn’t dehydrated or packaged for long-term storage?” Kylo asks curiously.

“Of course I have; it’s just been a while.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen or so years.”

Kylo blinks at him and doesn’t respond for so long that Hux ends up trying to explain himself; like it was a failure on his part to eat the same things his crew ate.

“Look, there isn’t a lot of variety when you grow up outside the republic’s domain. It would be too suspicious, not to mention expensive, to buy fresh food and have it delivered to the unknown regions. Sometimes my father managed to get alcohol or frozen meat and vegetables from the Corellian system. Regardless, eating rations creates camaraderie between-”

“Hux, I’m going to go get us some groceries and take-out.” Kylo interrupts, “Stay here: don’t open the door for anyone.”

“The entire point of my being here is to keep you out of trouble; how can I do that without going with you.” Hux snaps.

“You are here because the Supreme Leader wanted you here; I’m going to get food. It’ll be fine.” Kylo says before closing the door and locking it with the single room key.

 _That bastard just locked me in here_ , Hux realizes as he glares around the room. He looks at the refresher for several minutes before tossing his jacket on the couch and yanking his shirt off.

He decidedly _doesn’t_ scream three minutes later when the hot water runs out.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

When Kylo returns with several bags and a small box he finds Hux perusing a fashion magazine he found in one of the nightstands when he realized the holoscreen didn’t work; because _of course_ it didn’t. He perks up at the smell coming from the paper bags but eyes Kylo suspiciously anyway, trying to figure out why Kylo was being so considerate when he could have just gotten himself food and not offered Hux any. Doing so would have definitely been less surprising, if more aggravating.

“You locked me in here.” He accuses.

“The door unlocks from the inside.” Kylo reminds him as he sets the box and two paper bags on top of the dresser.

“Yes, but I couldn’t exactly leave without locking the door behind me, could i?”

Kylo rolls his eyes but doesn’t otherwise respond.

“What are you chewing on?” Hux asks instead of satisfying his curiosity about what Kylo bought.

“Tal gum.” Kylo says, pulling a tubular green package out of one of his pockets and tossing it to Hux as he puts some of the items from the bag into the fridge.

Hux examines the package, popping a little ball wrapped in foil out of the open end, “what is it?”

“It’s a sticky substance from the Vong, some places like to add different flavours to it and chew on it for a while.” Kylo explains as he sets the paper bags on top of the box and joins Hux on the couch, setting the items on the floor.

“This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to feed me things I might not even like.” Hux says.

Kylo smirks, “I bought things that I like, so by all means eat your military rations.”

Kylo pulls what is obviously a pie out of one of the paper bags, followed by a waxed carton that almost seemed small in his hands. Using a spoon Kylo breaks the crust on the pie, revealing cuts of white meat and diced vegetables in thick gravy. Then he opens the carton and, using the pie as a bowl, he spoons the chunky stew it contained into it.

Hux watches closely as Kylo stirs the stew and gravy together before snapping out of his daze, swallowing hard to ensure he doesn’t drool all over the place the second he opens his mouth and reaches for the unopened paper bag.

“I didn’t get you the same thing,” Kylo tells him and rolls his eyes when Hux eyes him suspiciously again, “I got myself factyrn meat pie and Bantha surprise; they’re wookiee foods, incredibly spicy. If you’ve been eating military rations for over a decade you probably wouldn’t even be able to taste it past all the heat. I’m fairly certain whoever makes rations hasn’t ever heard of anything as outrageous as adding salt or pepper, much less spice.”

Hux immediately imagines a small Ben Solo eating the same thing on a wookiee’s lap and shoves the image away, “and you got me what, exactly?”

“Endwa and Mounder potato rice.” Kylo says between bites of his own meal.

Hux half-smiles, “Corellian food?”

Kylo shrugged, “there should be a plate in the bag. It’s best when you pull the endwa off the stick and put it on top of the rice and then cover it with the orange gravy. There are always the crab-stuffed creampuffs in the fridge if you don’t like it”

Hux tries not to be touched by the consideration Kylo put into picking something Hux might enjoy, fails; then he tries to order himself to ignore the feeling and fails that too. So he mixes the food as suggested and ignores Ren watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“Oh.” Hux says quietly after his first bite, looking at his plate in surprise.

Kylo doesn’t respond but Hux is too busy shovelling rice and endwa into his mouth to notice. He hadn’t realized that meat could be sweet and tender instead of bland and chewy, nor that potatoes could have any texture other than ‘grainy.’

 They’re both almost done before Kylo jerks, drawing Hux’s attention from his meal and pulls a covered cup out of the box on the floor and offers it to the general. Hux furrows his brow but is still chewing so he can’t ask what it is.

Kylo tells him anyway, “that is a smoothie; it’s made from liquidizing fruit. Apparently they were quite common on Alderaan.”

Hux swallows and sets his nearly empty plate in the arm of the couch to take the cover off of the drink. He eyes the reddish mixture curiously.

“Apparently?” he asks absently.

Kylo’s face goes blank, “yes, I’ve never actually had one.”

Hux recalls that Leia Organa is technically a princess of Alderaan and catches himself feeling bad for reminding Kylo of his mother.

Then he realizes that technically Kylo is a prince; of Alderaan.

And he snorts before he can stop himself.

He covers his mouth with his hand and slowly turns towards Kylo, who is looking at him as though alarmed.

“What,” Kylo asks, “was that?”

“Nothing,” Hux assures him quickly, “this smoothie smells good; sweet.”

Kylo’s expression shifts into a glare, “don’t.” he says.

“No, I’m sure it’s quite good.” Hux says, he takes a small sip of the drink and licks his lips, “it’s quite tangy actually, not as sweet as I thought. Very good, you should have some.”

Kylo doesn’t say anything in response but he does set his nearly empty bowls on the dresser and heads to the refresher with his own smoothie in hand.

“You’re sleeping on the couch.” He says from the doorway.

Hux jerks back as though slapped, nearly spilling his drink on himself “What? Why?”

“You’re smaller; you’ll fit on it better.” Kylo informs him.

“I’m only a couple of inches shorter than you!”

“But probably half as broad; if that. You’re practically a stick.” Kylo says cruelly, “Besides we're here so I can find Skywalker through imprints in the force. I’m going to need to sleep well.”

Kylo smirks at Hux’s anger but closes the door before the general can respond.

Hux takes the couch, but he doesn’t warn the knight about how quickly the hot water runs out. Hearing Kylo scream when it does is incredibly satisfying.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Late in the evening a week later Hux is sprawled upside down on the couch in a way he hadn’t done since he was a child. Kylo Ren sat cross-legged on the bed. Meditating.

Again.

Hux was watching the rise and fall of his chest through that thrice-damned shirt. Hux was imagining wrapping his teeth around the other man’s collar bone and biting down so hard he broke something. Hux was imagining ripping the flesh from Ren’s back with only his nails and licking up the blood.

Hux was wondering when his urges started to become so violent.

He knew he didn’t actually want to physically harm Ren, if he even could. But he was tense and he was horny and Ren had a great ass and large hands and was clearly mentally damaged with a newly evident sense of humour that made him almost easy to get along with. And sometimes they caught each other’s gaze and the air would thicken and Ren’s muscles would tense as though he was fighting to keep himself in place and Hux didn’t allow himself to knowingly fuck crazy but he was only human and those  _hands_.

Hux forced his eyes closed with effort and exhales as slowly as he could.

_Phasma was right, he is my type. She would never let it go either. She would remind me every opportunity she could if she found out that she was right. Damn her._

_What do I do when Snoke asks me to report on Ren’s behaviour? Tell him I fucked him? He would have us both killed._

_What would Ren do if he found out I was ordered to report on his behaviour? Probably kill us both._

Hux sighed, irritated that he was only just now realizing the position the Supreme Leader had put him in. It was a hell of a test and seemed like a rather round-about way of getting rid of him; if that was even the intention. Perhaps Hux had been ordered to accompany Ren to Reecee because Snoke assumed they would kill each other. Both Hux and Ren had been very open about their negative opinions of each other in the past but Ren was different now.

Hux opened his eyes and watched the knight breathing again.

_Why is he so calm these days? Why does it matter? I wouldn’t have wanted to fuck the man if he had been as pleasant when we first met with the outfit and his face hidden. Would I want to fuck him if he was still an absolute tit now?_

_If I fucked him I could get these damned urges out of my system and move on with my life._

_Unless he took it too personally. Changed man or not I can’t imagine him taking well to being fucked and dumped._

_Dammit, dammit, dammit!_

Hux slid sideways till he was lying on the couch like a normal human being and faced the back of it. He knew not watching didn’t stop the thoughts but he kept trying. He thought longingly of the bland reports he used to receive regularly on the Finalizer. He thought longingly of his bathtub and his bed and considered cracking open that Corellian whiskey he keeps on a shelf above his-

_I am sitting in a room above a bar._

_I could be drinking in that bar._

_I could, possibly, find someone to have sex with in that bar._

He shoots up and barely remembers to grab the credit chip from where Kylo left it on the dresser earlier and to pull up the hood on the cowl he’s still wearing before he’s out the door without a word.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Its full evening by the time Hux returns to the room. Which wasn’t saying much; he had barely spent thirty minutes at the bar before the threatening glares he received from heavily armed customers got to him. He considers it a measure of his intelligence that he had purchased a bottle of liquor instead of asking for shots. Because now he had a cheap bottle of what might be rum in his hand and was returning to his room after having a plate of tuber wedges and about three fingers worth of the label-less alcohol.

He opens the door to their room and almost drops the glass in his hand. Apparently in his absence Kylo had decided to shower and now he was walking about their room shirtless and towel drying his hair.

He was a _menace_.

Hux clutches the glass tighter in his hand and kicks the door shut, Kylo watches him sit on the couch and refill his glass but doesn’t raise an eyebrow mockingly until the general looks at him.

“Something to say?” Hux asks sardonically.

“Not a thing.”

Kylo puts on a shirt and Hux isn’t disappointed at all. He is annoyed; he is drinking because of Kylo and now Kylo is killing his buzz. They had been on the precipice of galactic control not long ago and now they are hiding amongst people that the Republic didn’t even care about. And Kylo was sprawled all over the bed as though he hadn’t a care in the world. As though he didn’t-

As though-

 _To hell with it_.

“Why don’t you break anything anymore? Why are you so calm all the time?” That was blunter than what usually came out of his mouth, but Hux couldn’t take it back now.

“What?” Kylo asked, sitting up.

“Why are you so calm?” _was that succinct enough for you?_

“You’re drunk.”

“No, I’ve been drinking, I’m not drunk. Answer the question, Ren.”

Several minutes pass and Hux, impatient for a reply, finishes his drink, makes a disgusted noise and refills his glass again. Before he can drink it Ren scoots to the end of the bed, grabs the glass out of his hands and drinks it instead.

“Ugh, this is terrible.” Ren complains.

“What in the _actual_ fuck?”

“If you are going to ask me questions I don’t want to answer, I’m going to need to be drinking as well.”

“You could at least get your own glass.” Hux mutters petulantly.

Ren smirks, “afraid of cooties?”

“You are a barbarian and a child.”

Ren throws back another shot of the drink, “I do what I can.”

“I thought you said it was terrible.”

“It is.”

“Then why are you still drinking it?”

“Because if you drink that entire bottle alone I think it might kill you.”

“Would you rather do it yourself?”

Ren grins at him stupidly but doesn’t respond, choosing instead to pour more alcohol into the glass. Hux scowls, takes the glass from the knights hands before he can drink it and does so himself. When Ren stands from the bed with the bottle still in his hand Hux begins to argue before realizing that Ren is only grabbing another glass leftover from one of their meals. The knight even goes so far as to refill Hux’s before filling his own and sipping from it.

“I’m not calm.” Ren says suddenly, “I’m apathetic. I’m confused. I’m tired. Rage is exhausting and I can’t bring myself to feel it like I used to. I can’t feel anything like I used to. Or I feel it too much and I can’t understand it. I can’t remember things properly; some things are missing. I feel like somebody pulled memories from my head and if I don’t remember what was lost how can I get it back?”

Hux takes a moment to absorb that Ren actually just answered his question; while he does so Ren twitches and looks away.

Hux frowns “you said that you didn’t realize you had been gone so long - when we were in that abandoned storage facility. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes and no,” Ren smiles wryly , tilting his glass to watch the amber liquid swirl “you said it had been seven months that I was away. I only remember being gone for a month and a half at most. I think I remember wondering how my injuries had healed so quickly and Snoke saying that he used the force to heal the worst of the damage. I accepted that, at the time, but that’s not – users of the dark side can’t use the force to _heal._ Healing requires intentions that are anathema to the dark side. But I was disoriented and he was angry. He was so _angry_. He said I failed, that I didn’t deserve the gifts he had given me. He threatened to hand me over to the Resistance so he didn’t have to sully his hands by killing me himself. He said that I wasn’t worth the effort. I-”

Ren cuts himself off with a choking noise and finishes his drink. His eyes are getting glassy, as though gathering tears and for the first time in his life Hux wishes he knew how to comfort someone; but he has never had occasion to do so nor been comforted himself. Out of fear of making it worse he ends up doing nothing at all. Ren doesn’t seem to be paying attention to him anyway, Hux notes; Ren is speaking like he can’t stop.

“I don’t even remember why it mattered if I killed Han Solo. Snoke said that eliminating my connections would give me better access to the dark side; make me stronger. But that doesn’t make any sense, why did I think that made sense? I was angry at my father while he was alive, but how can I hate a dead man? There's nothing left to be angry at; he can’t continue to disappoint me by carrying on with his life after the hand he played in destroying mine if he’s dead.” Ren laughs derisively and rubs one of his eyes with the heel of his hand, “for a moment, when he called my name, I was relieved. _He finally came after me_ , I thought. But then I remembered all the years it had been since I had seen him last and I knew it didn’t really matter. But I was still…pleased that he made an attempt to get me to go back; that he didn’t leave Starkiller base without trying. But I needed to be stronger so I ignored it and I tried to focus on the disappointment, the rage. I _thought_ I needed to be stronger, if I’m stronger then maybe people will stop seeing me as a tool to be used for their own ends.”

Ren sniffs “I don’t even remember anymore if I actually killed him. My father, I mean. Snoke reassured me that I did, but I don’t…he’s definitely dead. Han Solo is deader than his son but I don’t feel like I did it. I had asked him to help me; the two sides of the force are always pulling at me, and it's agony. I just wanted it to stop and Snoke said Han Solo had to die. When I held my lightsaber out to him he put his hand on it and I don’t remember who turned it on. When I left Snoke’s Citadel I was so sure I had done it and it destroyed me, thinking I had killed my father for nothing. Remorse doesn’t make anybody stronger; regret doesn’t serve the force at all. But the further I got from the Citadel, the longer I was on board the Finalizer, the less sure I became. I can’t _remember_  and I’ve tried meditating, but I keep recalling contradicting memories. I remember putting the saber through him of my own will but I remember him promising to help me and doing it himself. I remember kicking him off my lightsaber before the light left his eyes and I remember him falling from it. I don’t know what happened. Meditating isn’t helping; I can’t read the force like I once could. I’m weak. And I failed, I followed through with my final test but I failed because I cared too much about a man that sent me away when he couldn’t deal with me anymore.” Ren suddenly stands and starts pacing the short expanse of the room, tugging on his hair, “and now I’m a hindrance to the First Order; I’m useless. And it’s just getting worse; I can’t meditate because I’m so unfocused. I can’t find a single trace of Skywalker and I can’t go back to Snoke with nothing. I have nothing else left, this is all I am and I ruined it. I - what are you doing?”

“I appear to be stopping you from ripping your hair out.” Hux says, calm in the face of Ren’s pain.

While Ren was forcing his emotions out of himself Hux had stood and grabbed the knight’s wrist, pulling his hand from where it was tangling in his own hair. Hux thought he should let go but he could feel Ren’s thumping pulse, and honestly, it was a nice wrist and he was a little drunk. And Ren was hurting and that didn’t seem necessary. Ren was also staring, confusion marring his features. His eyes were definitely dry now and kept flickering between Hux’s grip on his wrist and all over Hux’s face; as though Hux’s features would provide more answers and if he stared hard enough he could find them.

“You aren’t useless, Ren. Snoke is an idiot and this entire escapade was doomed to failure from the start. You said yourself you could barely sense Skywalker’s presence at a place that was abandoned. This place is practically a city - an uncivilised city, let’s be honest with ourselves here - but a city none-the-less. Now stop frowning so hard,” Hux teased, attempting to lighten the mood and poking Ren between the eyebrows with his free hand to smooth out the furrows. Privately he could admit that teasing wasn’t his forte, “that’s how a person gets wrinkles, you-”

He sucks in a sharp breath and cuts himself off when Ren grabs  _his_  wrist as he pulls it away from the knights’ face. Hux nearly begins giggling hysterically when he realizes how silly they must look standing in the middle of their room, holding each other’s wrists.

Then he nearly groans when he realizes that Ren is touching him with _that_ hand and he feels the strength in it when Ren gently flexes it around his arm.

_He could easily fit both of my wrists in that one hand…fuck._

“I like when you call me Ren.” Ren says suddenly; his voice deep, rough and broken as though he had been crying and screaming instead of speaking.

Hux feels like that voice is vibrating down his spine and settling somewhere in his groin. He swallows thickly.

“Okay.”

Then Ren yanks him closer and presses their lips together.

Hux is too tipsy and too surprised to even consider smothering the groan that bubbles out of his throat at the contact; he frees Ren’s wrist and immediately grabs the other man’s hip in order to pull him closer and leaves indentations next to Ren’s spine where his fingernails are digging into the other man's flesh.

Ren responds by tugging on the hairs at the base of Hux’s skull and biting at his lips. Ren’s mouth is sharp with alcohol and tastes like smoke, his body feels like strength and power and Hux submits without thought. For once he doesn’t want to be in control; he doesn’t want to keep himself on a tight leash. Usually he leads during his intimate encounters; never quite letting himself go. He takes what he thinks he needs and then it’s done. But he can’t quite force himself to take control of this situation; he finds he doesn’t really want to.

Ren is a passionate man; Hux looks forward to discovering how that translates into intimacy.

When Hux goes slack in his arms Ren freezes for just a moment before he  _growls_  and let’s go of Hux’s hair. Hux has a split second to think that he’s going to fall before Ren has an arm wrapped around his ribs to support him while he lifts Hux with a hand under one of his thighs. Hux grabs Ren’s shoulders and slings his legs around his waist, nipping and licking at his neck as Ren lowers them onto the couch.

When they’re finally settled Hux is sitting on Ren’s thighs, still clinging to his shoulders and Ren’s knees are pressed into the back of the couch. Ren’s hand on his lower back keeps Hux’s hips flush to his body and Hux groans into the other man’s neck when he feels Ren’s erection pressing against his ass through their pants. Ren’s other hand makes its way back into Hux’s hair and he pulls the General away from his neck in order to kiss him again. Hux responds by grinding his hips down onto Ren’s erection, earning himself a grunt in response.

Hux’s hands wander from Ren’s shoulders down to the hem of his shirt, pushing it up as he runs his hands over Ren’s abdomen and up his ribs to his chest. The hand not in Hux’s hair pushes its way into his trousers and cups his ass so Ren can guide Hux’s still moving hips when Hux’s rhythm stutters at the feel of Ren’s large hand on his naked skin. Hux hisses and his fingers curl, digging his nails into Ren’s chest and catching on one of his nipples.

“Shit, Hux.” Ren breathes against his mouth before pulling away.

Hux doesn’t realize he whines when Ren removes his hands until Ren is pulling his own shirt off and knocking Hux’s arms out of the way.

“Just let me,” Ren says as he undoes the buttons on his pants and sits up a little to push his pants down just enough to free his cock. When Hux eagerly reaches for it Ren shakes his head and pushes his hand away “not yet.” So Hux grabs his upper arms instead; groaning at the feel of the muscles moving underneath Ren’s skin.

Ren undoes Hux’s pants and Hux lifts his hips so that Ren can pull them down. When Hux lowers his hips again Ren spreads his knees so that Hux settles between his thighs and manages to completely remove the smaller man’s pants.

After Ren throws the trousers across the room he puts his hands on Hux’s thighs to keep him relatively still and gives himself a moment to memorize the sight of an aroused Hux in his lap. Hux feels like his skin is burning as those dark eyes roam over him and doesn’t even care if his skin is flushed with drink and arousal because Ren’s hands feel like they are engulfing his thighs and they are so close to his cock and if Ren would just move them up a little bit-

Ren’s smirk is filthy, as though he’s reading Hux’s mind and finds it amusing. He lifts a hand and rubs his thumb up the underside of Hux’s cock, pressing hard against the frenulum before gently spreading the pre-come that’s gathered at the slit over the head with a barely-there touch. Hux’s muscles tense and his eyelids flutter but he doesn’t make a sound; he doesn’t realize he’s biting his lip till he feels his canine tooth break the skin and he ends up gasping painfully instead.

Then Ren licks his palm with the saliva he must have been gathering in his mouth and wraps his hand around Hux’s cock; he jerks the other man off with measured strokes, trying different techniques until Hux is groaning loudly. Ren continues, removing his hand just before reaching the head and repeating until Hux is gasping with every upstroke; the hand not digging its nails into Ren’s forearm fisted into the fabric of the couch cushion.

When Hux realizes his gaze has been unfocused since Ren started touching him he opens his eyes and looks down to watch. He immediately realizes that doing so was a bad idea if he wanted this to last much longer

“F-fuck, Ren. Your hands.” He breathes.

Ren makes an inquisitive noise and when Hux looks up their eyes meet and Hux’s hands reach up of their own accord to pull Ren’s face down to his so that he can pant into the other man’s mouth between sloppy kisses he’s barely conscious of performing.

Hux rests his forehead on Ren’s shoulder and puts a hand on the back of the couch to push himself forward so he can blindly reach between his own legs to Ren’s cock. The rhythm of Ren’s hand falters and he stops breathing when Hux’s fingers touch his leaking head; Hux twitches in Ren’s hand when he feels how wet the other man is without having even been properly stimulated yet.

Then Ren is moving once more; he twists them both so that Hux is now lying horizontally on the couch. The knight lifts himself up with one hand pressing into the cushions above Hux’s head and pushes his pants off until they’re dangling from one ankle. Ren lowers himself, licks his palm again and takes them both in hand. Hux bites his forearm through his shirt in order to not cry out but Ren pulls his arm away and places it on his side which causes Hux to shiver when he feels Ren tense up to thrust into his hand against Hux’s cock.

“I  _will_  hear you when you come.” Ren growls into Hux’s neck, his teeth scraping against Hux’s skin; voice vibrating in his chest where they are pressed together.

Hux groans inarticulately.

He barely notices Ren moving until he’s biting into Hux’s shoulder and the shock of it has him tensing and coming all over Ren’s hand and his own shirt. It feels like electricity sparks across his skin and he loses the ability to process sight or sound. When he comes back to himself Ren’s breath is coming hot and fast against the collar of his shirt and Ren’s back is arched like an angry cat. Looking between them he sees Ren’s hand moving quickly over himself, twisting around the head of his cock until he lets out a painful sounding groan and spills onto Hux’s shirt. Hux can’t even bring himself to be annoyed about the mess; he’s still floating high on endorphins. He does appreciate Ren squeezing himself between the back of the couch and Hux’s body instead of falling on top of him though.

After their breathing has evened out Ren starts kicking his legs around, trying to dislodge the pants that are still hanging off his ankle. Hux shakes his head at the ceiling and shoves Ren’s arm out from where it rests against his stomach under his filthy shirt so he can get up. Ren makes a sound somewhere between a grunt of confusion and a whine of irritation but doesn’t open his eyes.

Hux grabs his bag on the way to the refresher and rolls his filthy shirt into a ball, shoving it to the bottom after he pulls out a clean top and his sleeping shorts. After dressing and cleaning his face and hands he opens the door only to be pulled onto the bed immediately by Ren, who managed to remove his pants but is wearing his underwear. Before Hux has a chance to say anything Ren flings the bed sheet over the both of them and shifts around until Hux’s back is pressed against his chest and his head is resting on Ren’s upper arm instead of a pillow.  

“And what if I don’t want to sleep here?” Hux huffs; scowling at the wall.

Ren pushes one of his legs between Hux’s and noses at the hair on the back of his neck. When Hux shivers Ren tightens the arm slung over his chest.

“That couch is incredibly uncomfortable.” He mumbles.

“Really, I hadn’t noticed.” Hux replies scathingly.

“Hux. Shut up.”

Hux grumbles nonsense to himself but between the sex and the alcohol from earlier he’s exhausted and covers the arm Ren has around his chest with his own. His hand wraps around Ren’s wrist in an echo of earlier and he feels Ren grin against the back of his neck before he falls asleep.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

When Hux wakes up the next day Ren is lying on his back in the middle of the bed snoring lightly. The problem is that Hux’s head is on Ren’s stomach, his nose buried in the other man’s happy trail and an arm thrown over his waist. It isn’t until he shifts his head that Hux realizes Ren has a hand buried in his hair.

Hux didn’t cuddle, even on the rare occasion that he did share a bed with someone else. The fact that Hux obviously turned around to practically drape himself all over Ren while sleeping was indicative of….something. He wasn’t sure what. But something, certainly.

He didn’t want to think about it.

They shouldn’t have done what they did – it complicated things and Hux  _really_ wasn’t supposed to want to do it again. He was incredibly aware of how little he would need to move before his face would be in Ren’s crotch. The idea of moving those few inches was terribly tempting; he hadn’t really done much in the way of reciprocation the night before. He barely got to play at all and he had been imagining toying with Ren’s body for weeks.

Very carefully he began to extricate himself from the bed and the man still in it. To initiate a repeat of last night would be too much like setting up an agreement to continue such interactions indefinitely. As it was now they could both pretend that last night was a result of close quarters and alcohol. Anything else it might have meant was unimportant and not worth thinking about.

There were too many ways repeated liaisons with a man like Ren could blow up in his face. Ren could get attached and go off the deep end when Hux didn’t return his feelings. If the Supreme Leader found out about it he would likely use Hux as a tool to keep Ren in line – Hux didn’t fancy imagining the methods Snoke would use to do so. He would be seen as a liability to Kylo Ren and Hux refused to be undermined in such a way.

Really there were just too many unknowns and that was why he snuck around the room getting dressed before heading downstairs to have breakfast without first waking the other man up.

When he returned a little over an hour later he felt as though he had his thoughts and any related emotions under command and stored away. If his control was tested by the sight of Kylo Ren bedraggled and sitting up in bed looking forlorn, cold and lonely then no one had to know.

Kylo cleared his own face of any emotion and eyed the general warily as Hux closed the door behind him. Several awkward seconds passed before Hux concluded that Kylo wasn’t willing to speak first and might even be looking to Hux for direction.

Luckily, he had already decided upon ignoring their intimacy altogether “You said that you haven’t been able to detect anything about Skywalker's presence while we’ve been here.” He says monotonously, “do you truly think that there remains a chance you might be able to sense something or should we leave?”

Kylo doesn’t respond and Hux is forced to look directly at him. Kylo’s eyes were as expressive as they were a year ago and now they held a little bit of confusion but mostly hurt and a fair bit of irritation. He looked as though he was going to say something and  _demand_  that they talk about it.

Whatever Kylo finds as he searches Hux’s face in turn has him sighing and getting out of bed to get dressed.

“We might as well head back the Finalizer, General.” He says just as tonelessly, “Whatever traces of Skywalker’s presence were once on this planet are long gone.”

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

“He’s going to have me killed, isn’t he?” Kylo asks eight hours later after he puts the shuttle on auto-pilot and they break atmosphere on their way back to the Finalizer.

Hux feels like he is covered in a layer of grime despite having had both a sonic shower and a quick hot shower before they left the cantina. He knows he isn’t actually dirty but he is a little hung over and he’s having a difficult time now ignoring the night before when he has a headache from the dehydration and Kylo’s expression upon waking up in bed alone is engraved on the back of his eyelids. In addition to that the moment they boarded the shuttle Kylo became twitchy again, he looked hunted – it was almost as though the last several weeks had never happened.

“He invested a lot of time in your training,” Hux tells him from where he’s leaning against the wall near the cockpit, “I’m sure he wouldn’t be so quick to have you disposed of.”

Kylo scoffs, “this was a test General, and I failed. I’ve turned up nothing. I didn’t stop the Resistance from receiving the map to Skywalker and I can’t find him myself.”

“For all we know whatever place that map leads to doesn’t actually have Skywalker on it; it could easily have been speculation. As far as I’ve been informed the Resistance hasn’t found Skywalker at all.”

Hux isn’t looking at the knight so he doesn’t see the contemplative expression on his face. When the general does look up from where he’s been fiddling with a ration wrapper Kylo is frowning.

“No one’s told you that there were reports of Skywalker taking on a new apprentice several months back.” Kylo states, surprise barely detectable in his voice. “The scavenger girl, presumably.”

Hux freezes, recalling updates on Resistance movements that he had received since Starkiller fell. They were few and far between. Which was really rather strange, now that he thought about it. They blended into the reports of the First Order’s movements, updates on the troops on other ships and the gain of a few territories from the Grand Admiral of the fleet.

In hindsight, the reports he received on a daily basis had been steadily dwindling in number the more time passed. He had slowly gained more time to focus on his irritation and trivial concerns because he had  _nothing else to do_.

“Perhaps there has been an issue with galactic transmissions.” He tries to reason, hoping it’s true, hoping he really wasn’t that stupid.

Kylo’s response is an entirely unimpressed look.

“No,” Hux snaps, “I will not believe Snoke has set me up, not when he has tasked me with keeping an eye on  _you._ ”

_Not after all I’ve done, how far I’ve come, I am not that expendable. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation, surely-_

Kylo Ren cuts off his thoughts when he barks out a laugh, “of course he asked you to keep an eye on me. He didn’t expect me to succeed at all did he? He  _is_  going to kill me. He’s going to – oh god.”

Suddenly Kylo is standing in front of him and grabbing Hux by the arms.

“He’s going to tell you to send me back to the Citadel, Hux. He’s going to take me back there and he’s going to get whatever use he can out of my body. He’s only interested in my connection with the force, Hux. I’m weak now, he’s going to do something horrible to me, you can’t tell him that I couldn’t follow Skywalker’s trail. You can’t.”

Hux watches Kylo Ren begging for mercy that he can’t give and convinces himself that he feels nothing. He yanks his arm out of Kylo’s grasp and steps away from him.

“Do you suggest we lie to him? That we spend an indefinite amount of time following a fake lead? We are at  _war_  Kylo and I’ve been wasting my time on this assignment for far too long already; I won’t continue to do so when the end result will be the same.” He says sharply.

Kylo deflates as the general speaks and Hux ignores the knights shaking hands and trembling shoulders. Instead he pulls the cowl over his head and tosses it at Kylo’s chest before he forgets to return it. He climbs into the co-pilot seat and settles in to watch the vacuum of space for the several hours it’ll take to reach the Finalizer and some bloody  _distance_  from Kylo Ren.

“What are you going to tell him, when we report in?” Kylo asks several minutes later.

“I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- [Kylo's Jacket](http://www.matchesfashion.com/intl/products/Balmain-Biker-collarless-leather-jacket-1040344)  
> -I tried to base the foods off of canonical foodstuff.  
> Factyrn meat pie is basically a spicy chicken pie, Bantha surprise is a spicy beef stew.  
> Endwa isn’t described much, but it looks similar to a meat kabob, Mounder potato rice is rice.  
> I don’t know what the hell crab-stuffed creampuffs are supposed to be, but they sound weird, possibly tasty and Admiral Ackbar would have eaten them. I don’t think people could eat them, but goddammit I don’t even care.
> 
> ALSO, [fanart](http://theriseofthefirstorder.tumblr.com/post/142553139255/hello-anon-yes-it-is-100-okay-to-request-others) for this chapter by [ Wyrd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wyr_d/works) aka [ Unme-I ](http://unme-i.deviantart.com/)  
> 


	4. Chapter 4

Hux was on the precipice of losing his composure completely. He stood on a cliff overseeing a valley of rage and he was teetering on the edge of it.

They had sent a message to Snoke’s Citadel requesting an audience only to receive a similar message to that which Hux had received for _months_  while Kylo was undergoing ‘training’ or whatever it really was. For two weeks they had been trying to contact the Supreme Leader to no avail.

General Hux was a mess; food was flavourless and he couldn’t decide if that was due to the week of freshly cooked meals or because he was too angry to taste it. He didn’t eat in the officer’s lounge with his crew anymore; afraid that they would see him struggle to swallow. Afraid that he wouldn’t be able to hide his disgust after each bite.

He had a constant thread of anxiety thrumming through his mind concerning how Snoke would react to their failure to locate Skywalker and what such a failure would mean for Ren. Hux’s inability to completely suppress the growing anxiety served only to fuel his self-doubt and anger which he had acquired in droves since re-boarding the star destroyer.

He couldn’t keep up the façade of calm, cool, collectedness for long enough to spend an entire shift on the bridge. He could barely convince himself it was worth getting out of bed and getting dressed just to make an appearance and ensure that they were still trying to get a hold of the Supreme Leader. He spent most of his time in his private quarters watching galactic news channels on the HoloNet and overseeing official messages sent between sectors of the ship; trying desperately to catch up on things he might have missed due to inattention.

The first few days back on board the Finalizer after Reecee had been spent trying to contact Admirals on other star-destroyers and sending messages requesting updates from Colonels stationed for training on some of the few planets under the First Order’s protection in the unknown regions. He had managed to hear back from almost everybody he messaged except for an Admiral and two Colonels that he always had trouble communing with anyway.

The Colonels were stationed on a planet inhabited by the First Order only to mine materials that caused an absurd amount of interference with the comms and the Admiral was stationed in that planets airspace; the metals were very valuable and sometimes smugglers or pirates would hear tales of it and try to explore.

It was not hearing back from Grand Admiral Silvie of the First Order Fleet, however, that had Hux enraged. For a time they had both been in direct competition for a spot in the First Order’s High Command. Such a position ensured the winner was answerable to only the Supreme Leader himself. It had been a short race and the Grand Admiral hadn’t taken kindly to losing. But she was still in command of the First Order’s Fleet and was supposed to answer directly to him.

She had been petulant and ornery when he first took his position but he had decided not to hold it against her. He would have been just as frustrated if someone twenty years his junior had taken a position he had worked very hard to obtain out from under him.

Because of how close they had both been to obtaining the same position he had declared her Second Chief Executive Officer so that there was someone to report to in the unlikely event he went off the radar. It seemed sensible at the time; she was a decent tactician with many years of experience under her belt and he hadn’t ever expected to be this far out of touch with his people in the first place.  

Clearly he had misjudged her devotion to the cause as now she appeared to be committing treason to the First Order by not responding to his messages. He should have vented her still breathing body into space the second she had scoffed at something he said during the first meeting he had ever held as her superior.

He  _needed_  to speak to Snoke about it but he couldn’t approach the Citadel without risking Snoke’s wrath on everybody aboard the Finalizer; the Supreme Leader didn’t take kindly to ships flying in orbit of his Citadel without his express permission. And Snoke wouldn’t answer his damned messages either. Hux couldn’t approach the Grand Admirals position if she was actually defecting for similar reasons. He wasn’t willing to risk both his own crew and any loyal crew aboard her ship for what may just be a mechanical failure or misunderstanding.

He couldn’t decide if he should risk punishment and the lives of his men, or stay where they were and wait for orders to come to him.

If he moved towards Snoke’s Citadel and was shot down not only did the First Order lose the approximately 82,000 personnel stationed on the Finalizer it also lost its main force user, the General of its military operations and the head of the stormtrooper program. If he approached the Grand Admirals ship the Order risked losing all of that in addition to another 82,000 personnel if both of the star destroyers went down.  _And_ if he took either of those paths and survived he would likely be killed regardless for not waiting for instruction.

But the longer he waited the less he knew about the Resistance’s movements; according to the news they were still attempting to rebuild the New Republic with the members that remained, although no planets wanted to host them out of fear _their_ system would be destroyed like the Hosnian system had been.

Hux tried to take some comfort from that despite knowing that this ceasefire would inevitably end and the war would start anew. The loss of Starkiller still hurt but he needed to prepare the military for fighting again – he had wasted enough time mourning.

He nearly screamed with frustration when he heard the buzzer that announced a visitor at his door.

Hux glanced at the several messages from Captain Phasma he had received and ignored throughout the day and knew his visitor was most likely going to be a very tall, very angry woman.

At least the quartermaster wasn’t tall, even if she had been angry when she buzzed at his door earlier that day. Apparently she had been messaging Lieutenant Mitaka for weeks with concerns about their dwindling medical and cleaning supplies and Mitaka had promised to forward the messages. Hux wasn’t entirely certain he hadn’t ignored those as well. Anything having to do with the quartermaster and her duties had just been an unwanted reminder of how completely he had let his attention turn from his ship and its crew. He was failing them and he was failing himself. He had dreams and aspirations and they were slipping out of his grasp because he couldn’t  _control_  himself and reign in his fears, concerns and feelings.

Hux stands and takes a deep breath before opening the door to his rooms. Phasma invites herself inside and nearly dents the wall hitting the button to shut the door behind her. He isn’t sure if he should be more or less intimidated that she decides to rip her helmet off before speaking.

“What, exactly, are you doing,  _General_?” she hisses.

“I  _was_  watching the news; did you know-”

“Do not play cavalier with me right now, Hux. Do _not_.” She snaps at him and he wants to remind her that he is her superior but he has never seen her so angry: particularly not at him. He finds himself shocked into stillness.

“I will tell you what you are doing if you aren’t feeling like sharing at the moment” she continues when he doesn’t respond. “You are slipping and it is painfully obvious to everybody on board. The lower in rank the rumours spread the more dramatic they become. Tension on board this ship is so thick with fear that it’s like walking through syrup. We have been drifting aimlessly through space for two weeks and you are hiding away like you don’t know what to do. ”

“I _don’t_ know what to do!” He snaps, “ _I_ haven’t received any orders either. It’s out of my control, Captain.”

“Then do something about it!”

He scoffs and leads her further into the room when he paces back towards his desk, “If there was something I could  _do_  don’t you think I would be _doing it_?”

“Don’t be daft; you’ve been preparing to  _do_  something before you even graduated from the academy. So _do it_.”

Hux eyes her suspiciously, “what are you suggesting, Captain?”

“If you have no orders then make your own. The entire Order will be lost if this inaction takes place much longer.”

“The risk is too high; I can’t make a move without putting a target on every life on board this vessel.”

“Then make sure you have strong allies before you make a move that puts those lives at risk. Put the chances of success in your favour.”

Hux scoffs again, and repeats “if it was that easy I would have done it already.”

“You used to come to me because I know how the crew thinks, because they relate to me more and are more open around me. The people aboard this ship don’t just answer to you; they  _respect_  you and your tactical mind. They are afraid of Kylo Ren and the Supreme Leader has spent this entire war on some planet that these people have never even been to; he is practically a non-entity to them. If you lead more men will follow you than those that will not. And that is not just true aboard this vessel. Since before you became General the troops have admired your ideology, you are often cited as the physical manifestation of the First Order doctrine by the more fanciful officers and stormtroopers. And while I have no doubt that still holds true that admiration will not last forever; take advantage of it while you can.”

“And what if less people join me in this than those that remain loyal to the Supreme Leader? Even if we won our numbers would be so small that I would just lead these people to death at the hands of the Resistance.”

“You know there is one other person that is as important as you are to the success of the First Order and he is on this ship. Before you left for Reecee you were practically skipping through fields of daffodils together.  _Make use of that connection_.”

“What, Kylo Ren?” Hux laughs, turning back to his desk and absently running his fingers along the edge “we were  _not_  skipping through fields of daffodils together. I haven’t even seen the man since we returned.”

“I know,” Phasma groaned, “what did you  _actually_  do down there?”

Hux’s forced amusement quickly turns into a scowl, “what is that supposed to mean, ‘what did  _I_  do’?”

“You see those messages blinking on your screen? I grew tired of you ignoring them for the past week or so and decided if I wanted to find out  _why_  you and Lord Ren were hiding and sulking on separate ends of the ship I would have to go to him. Would you like to know where I found him? I don’t actually care; I’m going to tell you anyway.

“You see, ever since you two returned from Reecee Kylo Ren has spent every single day sitting in the same spot on the catwalk over the hangar bay. So this morning I decided I would make a detour on my morning walks and join him. We have a rather mutual respect for each other; which I’m sure you know, as you do have a habit of sending us both on the same field assignments when the opportunity presents itself.”

“I do that because…I…”Hux lets himself be glared into silence.

“As I was saying,” Phasma continued, “this morning Lord Ren and I were sitting on the catwalk and I happened to ask why he keeps going there when he used to wander around all parts of the ship. He told me that he has been unable to decide whether he should throw himself off the Finalizer, leave on his shuttle or stay and face the consequences of his failures. It was like speaking to a drone; he was so monotonous and casual about discussing what amounted to his own death.”

Hux frowned and began picking at imaginary dirt under his fingernails in an attempt to avoid her judgmental eyes. Unfortunately he could still feel them.

Phasma sighs and drops the mocking tone she had been using to tell her story, instead adopting a conciliatory one, “he has nowhere to go Hux. Even if he took his shuttle and got away from the First Order he would never be allowed to run back home – the Resistance wouldn’t stand for it. Especially not after the death of Han Solo and the destruction of the Hosnian System. He knows Snoke would never let him get away alive and that the second he ran he would be hunted by both the First Order  _and_ the Resistance. Not even the Knights of Ren are loyal to him, they follow his lead in combat and seem to admire his prowess in battle but he has always been aloof with them; it’s obvious to me that he is never less comfortable than when they are on the same ship he is – although I will admit to not truly understanding the reason why.

“Kylo Ren knows that he is alive only by the grace of the Supreme Leader but now he believes that he is no longer essential and that it is only a matter of time before he is destroyed.” she chuckles wryly, “but he already believed that when he returned from his most recent stint at the Citadel and though he had been acting differently he hadn’t yet given up. Not like he has now. And of all the people I have ever seen that emotionally charged man interact with you, Hux, are the only one he has ever had such lingering emotional responses to. When you two argue he is irritable for hours; when you two were getting along he was in a good mood for most of the day.

“So what,  _General_ ,” Phasma snarls, her tone changing from one of fond remembrance to one of absolute frustration “did you do to that man on Reecee that has convinced him there isn’t a soul alive that would like to see him continue to draw breath and what are you going to do  _to fix it_?” 

“He told you all this did he?” Hux snaps instinctively; some primal fear that Kylo Ren couldn’t keep his mouth shut firing through is blood.

Hux knew Phasma had a natural talent – as well as a strong familiarity with what personality traits and body language to look for that would indicate non-conformity in the troopers – when it came to analyzing his emotions, he had made the assumption she was so good at reading him because they worked closely together and had technically known each other since they were teenagers. He hadn’t quite realized she was that good at reading  _other_ people as well. Even so he did not appreciate being told to fix a man that had been broken long before Hux had ever gotten involved.

“Some of it,” she replied calmly, “most of it I’ve known by simply keeping an eye on his actions and taking into account what I know if his history. I’m surprised you haven’t come to the same conclusions.”

Hux sniffed disdainfully, “I’ve had more important things on my mind than Kylo Ren’s mental state.”

Phasma sighs: long and loudly, “You aren’t going to tell me what happened, are you?”

“No.”

“Then…think about it now, at least. Lord Ren’s mental state  _is_  important, if just against the Resistance. Do what you need to do to make amends with him; because everybody aboard this ship knows that our time is short and he will be needed to change that.”

“If Kylo Ren is so important to the success of the First Order  _why_  would Snoke want him dead?” Hux challenged, he did  _not_  want to think about Kylo Ren, he did not want to be reminded of Reecee and he  _would not_  spill his feelings regarding those matters to Phasma just because she yelled at him a bit.

Phasma smirked, “I’m not saying he does, he would be stupid to kill off such a valuable asset. The point is that Kylo Ren genuinely _believes_  that Snoke has no more use for him.”

Hux acquiesced to that, at least.

“Besides,” Phasma continued, that damned smirk still on her face, “ _you_  were in a much better mood when you two were getting along as well. If you two could kiss and make up perhaps morale would improve again.”

Hux turned away from her and grimaced; there were legitimate concerns backing his decision to not continue any liaisons with Kylo Ren regardless of what his feelings were on the matter. A good lay did not make a good partnership.

Besides which, he hadn’t had to use sex to further his personal plans for years and he wasn’t going to lower himself to that stage again just so Kylo Ren would cheer up.

His eyes caught on the datapad the quartermaster had dropped off when she visited earlier. He hadn’t looked at it yet, but he already knew what needed to be done about it. Since many supply stores were destroyed with Starkiller base the First Order had been relying mostly on the backup stores on Snoke’s Citadel – which he couldn’t go to.

“We need to go for a supply run.” He said cheerfully. Picking up the datapad he spun on his heal to face Phasma with a smile.

“…okay?” she says slowly, trying to follow the sudden change of topic.

He hummed an upbeat tune as he perused the datapad, “It looks like we are closest to the Nirauan system,” he told Phasma, “as far as we know there is still a  _relatively_  reliable trading post on the outermost planet; Niru it’s called. I will forward you a list of what we need and you’ll make the trip, won’t you?”

“I…what?” Phasma frowned, “Is this a trick? What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” He assured her, “we need supplies, Niru is pretty good about trading with the First Order and they trade with the inner colonies quite often as well. So it’ll even be decent quality.” Hux sighed when Phasma continued to stare at him blankly, “ask Kylo Ren to accompany you, maybe getting off ship and completing a set task will cheer him up some.”

Phasma was silent for several minutes before capitulating.

“Fine, I will.” She pointed a threatening chrome finger at him, “but you better talk to him when we get back; his support could make or break the First Order. Whatever you think of yourself right now you need to remember that you didn’t rise through the ranks as fast as you did just to stagnate when you almost reached the top. You are the same man who sent the New Republic into disarray;  _you_  made that achievement possible. Don’t let an old, deformed man convince you that you are powerless.”

“Starkiller was destroyed,” Hux says quietly, that one irrevocable fact wreaking havoc on any pride he might feel about his preceding success.

“You have an entire career based on moving past set-backs.” Phasma reminded him, “This is no different.”

With that Phasma leaves him to his thoughts.

He has much to think about.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

It took a decent nights rest and a mental cataloguing of things he had achieved throughout his life by virtue of his own will-power, determination and intellect but Hux thought he could finally say that he wasn’t going to let the loss of Starkiller base hold him back any longer. Snoke had chosen _him_  to be the General of the First Order’s Military and when next they spoke Hux was going to be damn sure that he reminded the old man why he had done so.

Until then however, he was going to devote as much time to reassuring the crew on board the Finalizer that he was the same man he used to be – and he was going to do this by remaining as available and unflappable as he once was.

This was why he spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon overseeing the supply run on the bridge with the crew instead of at his desk in his quarters. So far it seemed as though he had made the right choice in doing so; Admiral Turner looked mildly relieved by his presence despite the fact that Hux hadn’t really done anything worth noting and Lieutenant Mitaka had grinned at him when he asked for a copy of the pre-mission overview.

Hux never thought he would find himself actually touched that his crew appeared to have  _missed_  him. Mitaka’s grin had made him a tad uncomfortable though – luckily Mitaka had noticed and returned to his usual professionalism almost immediately.

The General scanned the overview again while Captain Phasma and Kylo Ren neared the end of their discussion with a trader specializing in bulk trades and sales. Supply runs didn’t really necessitate his observation but he was trying to prove a point to his crew – sadly this left him in a position where he didn’t really have much to do besides listen to bartering; which was really rather dull.

The datapad told him that Niru was a planet populated mostly by deserters of the Chiss military – they had a monopoly on the trade market in this sector. The planet was frequented by smugglers and pirates of various species however. It was really a rather dangerous place;  _everybody_  was armed and there were no shortage of drinking establishments.

In addition the market Phasma and Kylo Ren were visiting was the largest on planet and set at the foot of a large dormant volcano. It had to have been the same size as, if not bigger than, the marketplace they had passed through on Reecee.

The possibility of things becoming disastrous very quickly if they went even marginally sideways was very high and that was half the reason he had sent both Phasma  _and_  Kylo Ren. If something bad  _did_  happen they could handle it and likely return with the supplies regardless of any trouble they might run in to.

Hux glanced at Phasma’s feed to watch the trader they were dealing with count the credits she had given him for the third time. He stopped short of rolling his eyes and let his mind drift.

He got the impression that she was still rather upset with him, but then he hadn’t really given her any reason not to be. They weren’t exactly going to have an in depth discussion about much of anything over comms where everyone on the bridge would hear what they were talking about.

Besides, he was rather unhappy with Phasma himself. He hadn’t  _wanted_  to know how Ren was handling things but she went and told him anyway like she was doing him a _favour_. He even understood the reasons behind why she did so but he was rather miffed she decided it was _his_ fault and therefore _his_ job to fix it without knowing his side of the story.

Although he would concede, privately, that there was every possibility that he could have had a hand in Ren’s reduced mental state these past two weeks. He hadn’t been particularly strategic or sympathetic in how he handled the morning after. Any problem he had with Phasma at the moment was mostly a result of feeling petulant that she called him out on his error without even knowing what it was.

But she was right about Kylo Ren; tactically Ren  _was_  necessary for the triumph of the First Order, especially if Skywalker was back with the Resistance  _and_  mentoring someone new. Ren was not only a powerful force-wielder but there was always a chance the Skywalker twins wouldn’t be as vicious in attacking him which could in turn open them up to attack.

Hux still couldn’t bring himself to terms with the idea that the Supreme Leader was willing to sacrifice such an advantage so easily. He still had a small hope that the Supreme Leader was planning something big; and that he had very good reasons for keeping Hux out of it. A man doesn’t spend a lifetime manipulating a single person to rely on his approval and acceptance in everything while building up and preparing a military operation with intentions of lording over an entire galaxy just to abandon it because a single super-weapon was destroyed.

Hux could admit to himself, now that adequate time had passed, that he had become emotionally compromised by the loss of Starkiller. It was like watching his dreams and ambitions fall to pieces in his hands – pieces that couldn’t be glued back together and put to use. It still shook him how quickly it was destroyed; decade’s worth of work gone in less than a few hours.

Hux had been so positive that Starkiller would win the war, that he would be able to use it under Snoke’s orders to end what lives needed to be ended and save the lives that could be saved so that when the First Order had galactic control he could just turn his pride and joy on Snoke’s Citadel-planet and reign over what was left.

He would have freed the galaxy from the rule of a man that had ordered the destruction of several star systems and billions of lives – with the right strategy in place he could have downplayed his own role in that destruction. With the right political ties and the proper things said at the most opportune moments he could have been the man that saved the people from tyrannical rule under a madman.   

Snoke wasn’t a politically savvy individual and it would always be his greatest failing. Snoke could manipulate on a person by person basis fairly well, especially when given the time to do so, but his ability to connect with large audiences was minimal at best – he wasn’t personable; he barely looked human and he wasn’t relatable. There was a reason that Hux said the speeches, led the people, and kept the entire First Order Military in line.

Snoke had even gone to the trouble of securing a political advisor, but he didn’t defer to her suggestions in much of anything and she had been sent to some agricultural planet under the pretence of securing a trade agreement with the natives. The last time Hux had spoken to her she was having trouble not with the locals, but in getting Snoke to agree to any of their requests.

Hux made a mental note to get in contact with her again.

Starkiller had been the key to that plan working; he had been so devastated upon its destruction that he hadn’t even considered alternatives. He’d been keeping the noose around his neck this entire time waiting for Snoke to order him to swing from it. But if Phasma was right…perhaps he didn’t have to. Snoke was making a play Hux didn’t understand because he didn’t have enough information, perhaps if he waited a little longer, while re-establishing contact with powerful allies – relationships he might have let drift away recently – then he would be able to make a new plan right under Snoke’s nose and strike when the time was right.

And, of course, the easiest place to start was with the Knight standing just outside of Phasma’s vision.

Ren had been quiet during Phasma’s negotiations and on the shuttle ride to Niru – other than to promise the pilot and the two stormtroopers guarding the shuttles on the dock that he would find them and destroy them if they ran – but he always had been a man of few words around the troops.

After the first bundle of purchases was being escorted back to the waiting shuttles by the two stormtroopers brought along for just that purpose Ren had told Phasma quietly that whatever she was using to polish her armour had her positively  _radiant_  in the sunshine. She had responded by making her sigh long, loud and sarcastic as she looked at the knight. Ren’s eyes had shined as though he knew she was glaring at him and he found it amusing. He led the way to the next stall without replying.

Hux looked forward to rubbing it in Phasma’s face that having Ren accompany her on this mission was a good idea. And privately he was glad to see that there was still some sign of life left in the man. Phasma hadn’t painted a pretty picture.

When the vendor Phasma was presently dealing with started counting the money again Ren sighed and told her he would be right back; she then spent the next fifteen minutes managing to keep an eye on both him and the vendor as Ren strode to a nearby stall and bought something before hiding it away in a pouch hanging off of his belt and returning. Hux frowned before resolving to find out what the knight purchased later and letting his attention drift again.

After his night spent with the other man Hux had been sure the nagging urge in the back of his mind to touch and take and have would be squashed and he wouldn’t think about it anymore. He touched, he took and any desire to do so again should be gone. That was the logical progression of such things and it had worked for him before when he had urges that were distracting him from his duty.

But the matter of the fact was he had almost found himself a little thankful that his ship was a mess and that the First Order was probably decaying without his guidance. He could spend his days ruminating over all the ways everything was falling apart around him without even thinking about Kylo Ren’s lips or hands.

He had never had his baser urges run out of control quite like this before; he had been a teenager once, and popping boners at the drop of a hat was troublesome but it wasn’t the same. He didn’t sleep well anymore because every time he closed his eyes and forced his daily worries from his mind he immediately remembered being manhandled and he couldn’t convince himself that he hadn’t liked it. The few times he gave in and touched himself to the memories of Ren’s skin and heat he ended up both disgusted with himself and incredibly unsatisfied.

He had been drinking that night, for Malachor’s sake; didn’t people always say you couldn’t remember things well after a night of drinking? Bantha fodder, all of it.

But Hux didn’t think he and Kylo Ren could work together anymore without intimacy involved – not without going back to sniping at each other’s throats. It was all a mess. He couldn’t be sure what Ren thought about working with him sans sex, but Hux hadn’t been able to  _not_ think about Ren naked for what must be months by now. He didn’t even remember when he started wanting the other man anymore.

Over time he had no doubt he could effectively quash his own desires and simply work with the knight, but there was the nagging issue that he really didn’t  _want_  to go that route. The problem with what he wanted to do was that it was terrifying in how incredibly unpredictable it was.

The facts were that as little as he liked admitting to wanting anyone, he  _wanted_  Kylo Ren just as badly, if not more, than he  _needed_  him in the event that he decided to move against the Supreme Leader. Hux was almost certain that Kylo Ren wanted him as well, all signs pointed that way, but feelings were unquantifiable and until told otherwise Hux figured – based on what Phasma had told him – that Kylo Ren would be amendable to continuing their liaison.

And so, if he approached Ren to continue whatever it was that began on Reecee not only would Hux not have to look elsewhere to satisfy any sexual urges he might feel in the future he would also have someone within easy reach who, evidence suggested, he was extremely compatible with in bed. If they had that type of relationship then Ren might be more amendable to following Hux’s lead in other aspects of their lives and Ren would certainly be in his corner if any…troubles arose within the First Order.

Despite their physical compatibility however Hux couldn’t dismiss the  _years_  of contention that took place between them before this all started. He had no way of ensuring that Ren wouldn’t expect Hux to bow to all of his whims and throw a fit when Hux didn’t. He had no way of knowing how Ren would react to disagreements they might have – Kylo Ren may not have had any tantrums since returning from his ‘training’ but Hux would be foolish to assume they were an issue of the past. What if they had a disagreement and Ren got so angry he destroyed half the ship and left to go gallivanting off to the Resistance or Snoke or whoever else would take him?

 _Well_ , Hux could admit to himself,  _he probably won’t willingly go back to Snoke. But things change and there will always be a chance that even if the Resistance won’t take him back then his mother might defect and do so_. _It’s unlikely, but still a possibility_.

Hux leaned back in his chair and started scratching the palm of his hand with his nails; his eyes were still on the holoscreens, but he was barely paying attention.

There was no guarantee he or Kylo Ren would continue to harbour this attraction for a long time. And the fallout could be disastrous not just in regards to the war but emotionally. Hux had never wanted anybody or anything for long periods of time. He had his aspirations, but those were different. He didn’t know if he was capable of maintaining an interest in another human being sexually; even his relationship with Captain Phasma was based mostly around mutual respect and his reliance upon her to oversee the stormtrooper program effectively – if they didn’t work so closely together Hux wasn’t sure they would still speak despite how compatible their personalities and humour might be. He didn’t think he and Ren respected each other much at all and if they did it was begrudgingly.

What would Ren do if Hux lost interest in their liaison before Ren was ready for them to end? If the General was lucky Hux would be killed quickly, if not...

There was also the barely-formed fear of what it would to do to  _him_  if Ren lost interest before Hux did. Hux didn’t have much, if any, experience with feeling romantic emotions but he was in danger of experiencing them with prolonged exposure to Kylo Ren. He didn’t necessarily believe Ren would take advantage of Hux if he  _did_  develop an emotional attachment, but there were others out there that would rip Hux apart if it would damage Kylo Ren.

Besides that Hux didn’t know how he would react if he became accustomed to Ren’s presence and Ren wanted nothing more to do with him. Hux hadn’t ever been in a ‘relationship’ and he had certainly never been in ‘love’ but a year ago he also would have said he would  _never_  have sex with Kylo Ren – a year ago he would have found the idea offensive and yet here he was weighing the pros and cons of a mutually-exclusive sexual relationship with the man.

Hux snorted at the absurdity of his position. He could weigh the positives and negatives of such a relationship all he wanted but at the end of it he still really,  _really_ wanted to have sex with Ren again. And make it last much, much longer. Denying that desire had clearly solved absolutely nothing and now that he had accepted that doing so was more destructive than productive he was most eager for this mission to be over with so he could speak to Ren alone.

His attention was forced back to Phasma’s feed when someone started yelling. At some point the stormtroopers who were overseeing the delivery of the goods to the shuttles returned and were now leaving with the last shipment but they stopped when a native Chiss, who was very drunk if the way he stumbled about was any indication, started throwing insults at Phasma. She motioned for the stormtroopers to continue on and turned to give the drunken man her full attention.

“What appears to be the problem, Sir?” she asked mildly.

The man stops his nonsensical rambling before taking a step closer, screaming at her and gesticulating wildly. “You people murdered my brother and his family just last week! And here you are, shopping around as though you belong here.”

Hux makes note that several people are paying attention now and that there are about a half dozen men with pistols and other weaponry strapped on their person leaving a nearby bar – both the man yelling and the men approaching have a patch on their arms; a white X on a blue background.

A local Chiss gang most likely. He curses internally – they were just about to return to the Finalizer and everything.

While Hux was making note of the gathering crowd Phasma was trying to diffuse the situation “we are sorry for your loss, sir. But my companions and I were not directly involved-”

He drunk man spits on the ground, “of course you were, bucketbrain; you’re part of the Order isn’t ya? Well it was their ships that did it. An air raid on a fishing village in Nirauan for Malachor’s sake. What the fuck did they do to you? Not give you enough kriffing fish?”

At the corner of Phasma’s feed Kylo Ren could be seen turning to her with a raised brow as though asking if she wished for him to step in. Which Hux found impressive; he hadn’t ever considered the idea that Ren might defer to anyone else in any way – much less on whether he should attack or not while they were being threatened. And they were  _definitely_  being threatened: the majority of the gathering crowd was agreeing loudly with the drunken man’s accusations and the members of his gang had drawn their weapons. 

Phasma shook her head minutely at Ren’s unspoken question before replying to the drunk, “My men and I were not involved in any air raids recently and we are unaware of the circumstances surrounding the event-”

“Fuck this then,” the drunkard says before grabbing a blaster pistol out of a fellow gang-members hand and aiming it at the Captain. The man only manages to get one shot off, which freezes in the air less than a foot from the muzzle of the pistol, before his head snaps to the side by an invisible force and he falls over.

The crack of his neck breaking echoes in the sudden silence of the marketplace.

“If you would step a few feet to the side, Captain?” says Kylo Ren genially from where he stands with his hands folded casually behind his back; the plasma bolt still vibrating in the air several feet away.

Phasma complies easily and Hux finds himself momentarily impressed by the control Kylo Ren was still capable of showing over the force. With all the talk of how weak he was Hux had rather gotten the impression that Ren could barely do anything with it any longer.

The general had always admired this ability of Ren’s; it was impressive to see and it required absurdly quick reflexes to catch blaster fire before it reached its destination – much less just after it exits the barrel of the gun.

And with the direction Hux’s thoughts had been travelling lately he could also add how incredibly attractive it was to watch the way Kylo Ren could exercise his control over the force while looking as though he was simply out for a stroll in a park.

Once Phasma was out of the way the knight let the blast go, it hit a structure behind them and the crowd erupted in chaos- people fleeing the scene, others diving for cover and shots firing freely through the air.

Phasma takes cover behind what looks like a speeder turned stall-counter and double-checks that her weapon is loaded – which Hux knows is a habit because she definitely checked the damned thing a dozen times or more before even exiting the shuttle. 

Hux maintains his unflappable exterior for the sake of the crew on the bridge and simply reaches forward to open communications between himself and Phasma’s helmet.

“The stormtroopers are loading the last of the supplies aboard the shuttles, would you like for me to instruct them to join you, Captain?” He asks, as though the entire situation is barely beneath his notice.

Before Phasma can reply Kylo Ren throws himself down next to her; his hair is a mess, his eyes are practically screaming his excitement, a smoking hole has been added to his cowl and he is nearly grinning with unbridled glee but otherwise he looks unharmed – Hux doesn’t even notice the slow breath of relief he releases.

“Are you going to give me any back-up Captain, or am I to deal with this all by myself?” he asks, practically vibrating on the spot; clearly impatient to head back into the fray. Hux figures it must be a measure of some sort of personal growth that Kylo Ren would bother checking up on Captain Phasma before simply obliterating everyone.

  _Or,_  he thinks to himself,  _they are closer acquaintances than I had previously considered…probably that_.

“Just a moment, Lord Ren,” Phasma tells the impatient man beside her before addressing Hux, “we do not require backup General, have the troopers continue loading the shuttles and prepare for immediate departure. Also, have them defend the shuttles at all costs, if you would.”

“Affirmative, Captain.”  Hux tells her with a small smirk before directing Mitaka to relay the orders.

Hux watches as Ren grins maniacally and jumps over the vendor counter with Captain Phasma right behind him shooting quickly at people that aren’t being force blasted out of the way, crumpling to the ground with broken limbs or being shot with their own redirected blaster bolts. Hux has a moment to admire their brutal efficiency as a team before he hears the distinctive sound of a lightsaber being turned on and sees a flash of red in the corner of Phasma’s vid feed.

Hux’s expression falls flat and he calmly turns his attention to observing the stormtroopers loading and preparing the shuttles lest he lose control of himself and his crew sees how incredibly furious he is.

 _Lord Ren_  had better have a damned good excuse for this sudden idiocy by the time he was back on board.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Hux paces the main room of his quarters for a solid fifteen minutes after the shuttles return to the Finalizer; before their arrival he ordered Lt. Mitaka to oversee the unpacking of the supplies and Phasma to ensure the stormtroopers were debriefed. He ensured that their destination was set for the safest and farthest system they could get to from the Nirauan system and he serenely made his way to his rooms to experience his rage alone.

He didn’t leave until the palm of his hand started to ache and he had confirmed that Kylo Ren had returned to his own quarters. Then he methodically made his way to Kylo Ren’s private rooms, avoiding all personnel on his way, entered an override code into the system so that he could enter without knocking and shut the door behind him.

Kylo turned from where he was shutting a drawer of his dresser, his face blank as though he was expecting the General but hadn’t quite had the time to prepare for his arrival.

Hux makes a mental note to complain later about the obnoxious pile of mechanical scraps and what appear to be broken data pads sitting on a desk in the corner – it’s garbage and he expects his crew and any long-term visitors to maintain a certain set of standards while on board his vessel; even in their private chambers. It serves as a reminder of how very infuriating the individual standing before him could be. Such a reminder really wasn’t necessary.

Kylo opens his mouth as though to speak before Hux cuts him off.

“What the hell was that, Kylo?”

Kylo’s brow furrows with confusion “What?”

“What were you _thinking_?” Hux snaps.

“General, what-”

“What madness possessed you to use your fucking  _lightsaber_  in the middle of a busy marketplace that gets visitors from nearly every corner of the galaxy and regularly trades with the inner colonies _?_  Using the force was bad enough, but the lightsaber? Really?”

“Self-defence?” Kylo suggests, his confusion quickly being overridden by irritation, “You know how many people were there. It was-”

“You were perfectly capable of protecting yourself without that lightsaber.” Hux interrupts, “Which, shall I remind you, is recognizable all across this fucking galaxy.”

“Why does it matter what lightsaber I used, why do you even care?”

“Because for all we know the Resistance believed you might be dead; you’ll remember the scavenger did a hell of a number on you before leaving. Have you considered that they might not have made a move on the First Order because they believed  _you_  were no longer a threat? What other pretentious asshole out there would use a red lightsaber with a cross guard  _other_ than you?”

“Perhaps if you had been keeping closer tabs on the Resistance you would know exactly why they haven’t made any moves on you.” Kylo snaps back, “They are just as aware that I still draw breath as I am that Skywalker is still alive. Do not take your anger out on me.”

“If I choose to express my anger then you can be damned certain I will take it out on the one person who deserves it, Kylo! And you know Skywalker is alive because of what, the force? The force has some nice tricks but it is incredibly fallible! What has it accomplished for us in this war? You blame it for your weaknesses and occasionally choke people with it. Good for you. I could choke people with my hands and accomplish more for the First Order than you have.” Hux spits.

Kylo’s laugh is mocking, “You can choke people can you? With what; what strength? Do you have several dozen pounds of muscle that I’ve somehow not noticed? I know you haven’t been hiding it beneath that fucking coat of yours. You probably have a droid that opens your kriffing meal rations for you you’re so tiny. Have you even been on a battlefield? Have you ever looked death in the face and made it look the other way? Have you ever washed another man’s blood off your own hands? Watched the life leave their eyes? You’re a diplomat that someone trained to shoot in a straight line and decorated with titles so the little men respect you and follow your carefully crafted words.”

Hux is so angry he’s shaking, his nails are burrowing into his palms and he doesn’t even consider that he watched Kylo Ren destroy a crowd of people earlier that day with no more than a thought when he steps up to him.

Hux presses their chests together and stares into the other man’s dark eyes with righteous indignation as he speaks “Didn’t you accuse me of killing my father not that long ago? Did you think that was a carefully crafted rumour, Kylo? It was, but not quite the way you think. Do you think that I grew up in the same fucking fairy-tale you did? I was rocked to sleep with stories of great Imperial generals and leaders. I was brought up to believe in men and woman who  _lost_  their war because they weren’t effective enough and I was told I had to be better. What do you think growing up in the First Order was like? Did you think you had it worse because you grew up with Snoke poking in your head? He practically  _coddled_  you in comparison to what I experienced.

“Or did you think that your parents were somehow worse to you than being raised by quietly fuming fathers and viciously bitter mothers? You have no idea the type of people I’ve had to deal with to get to get to where I am; the people raised the same way I was. You haven’t a fucking clue about what I’ve experienced. Death occurs in places other than a battlefield; do not think you are better than me for making a bigger mess when you take a life than I do.”

“Well that’s just the crux of it isn’t it?” Kylo returns, “You’ve grown up just to regurgitate the words of men who  _failed_. You aren’t even following your own ambitions; you do whatever Snoke orders you to and your father designed the stormtrooper program you’ve used as a step-ladder to get higher up in the Order. You don’t even lead that anymore; you’re just a man too weak to oversee his own so-called success and too stupid to come up with his own ideas-” 

Kylo is cut off when Hux takes a step away from him in order to properly punch him in the face. Kylo is so surprised by the move that he doesn’t even think to stop the blow from landing and his head jerks to the side when Hux’s fist hits him in the chin. Hux then shoves him backwards and into the wall before Kylo even has the time to realize that he’s bitten his own cheek and he might  _actually_  be bleeding. He doesn’t even struggle when the General keeps him pinned in place and screams in his face.

“The Starkiller was mine,” Hux shrieks, “I did that! I rose through the ranks past men and women nearly twice my age while spending my free time studying thermodynamics and dark energy and quintessence. All while keeping myself in check so that no one knew how hard I was working. Do you know the first fucking thing about undermining people?” Hux steps back from pinning Kylo to the wall in order to absently wipe an angry tear from a cheek gone spotty with the flush of rage, “of course you fucking don’t. You are a brute that would rather cut someone down than talk them into surrendering. You didn’t even have to earn yourself a position of authority; you were handed it on a silver fucking platter.” Hux’s hands return to the knights shoulders, leaning all of his weight on those points of contact as though he could shove his words into Kylo through his hands and make him truly understand what he was saying, “and what did you do? On the day when over twenty years of hard work and dedication came to fruition, what did you fucking do,  _Kylo_? You let them destroy my oscillator. You let that fucking girl escape and you knew they were in the oscillator chamber and you fucking ran after them like a madman and let them nearly kill you without telling me anything. Years Kylo,” Hux spits as he yells and his fist connects with the wall just to the right of Kylo’s face, “that fucking base wasthe _centerpiece_  to everything I’ve ever planned and you just- and then what does Snoke do? He just fucking throws me off into the middle of space. As though  _I_  fucked it up, as though  _I_  was responsible  _for your lack of control!_ ”

“I know,” Kylo snaps before Hux can continue, “I didn’t…I don’t do it on purpose. I just, there’s a lot, and I lose track of priorities and I can’t, I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t fix it, but I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where they had been before I pursued them, I was just – I’m sorry.”

Hux takes a step back – rage quickly simmering down into something more manageable – eyeing Kylo warily like the knight is trying to lure him into a false sense of security before killing him or something else nefarious. But Kylo doesn’t look angry anymore, his posture resembles that of someone waiting to be punished and his eyes are more shamed and guilty than accusatory.

When Kylo’s expression doesn’t change and he makes no move to say anything more Hux’s fury fizzles out entirely – thanks in no small part to the blood starting to gather at the corner of Kylo’s mouth and the dull ache in his hand.

The general wipes at one of his cheeks with his left hand and grimaces at both the pain in his knuckles and the liquid on it from his angry tears. Suppressing his wrath was one of the first things his father ever taught him to do; ‘a commander never cries – not even because he is mad.’

“If you are apologizing because my body decides to express its anger by pouring water from my eyes I may actually kill you.” Hux says after his angry breath evens out, before shaking his hand and muttering to himself “Why did I hit you in the damned face? I know better than that. Fuck.”

“I am apologizing because I mean it, I was…foolish and thinking only of myself.” Kylo admits solemnly. The knight is quiet for several seconds as he deliberates with himself before blurting “I’m also absolutely terrified of what’ll happen to me if you decide I’m not worth the trouble and send me back to the Citadel.”

Hux sighs and begins slowly pacing, “I’m not sending you back to Snoke.”

Kylo watches him quietly for several minutes before saying “okay.” But it’s clear from his tone that he doesn’t truly believe that Hux is telling the truth.

 _Understandably_ ,  _I did just scream at and hit him_.

Hux stops pacing and turns to where Kylo is still leaning against the wall “I hit you.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t stop me”

“I wasn’t expecting you to.”

“You didn’t kill me afterwards.”

“I was rather surprised,” Kylo explains “and I killed a lot of people today, it helped a lot in releasing any pent up frustrations and rage I might have been harbouring.”

“Apparently.” Hux mutters as he begins gently feeling around his knuckles, looking for signs of damaged bone. The skin hadn’t split, but he hadn’t punched anybody or anything in a very long time and it already looked like it might be swelling.

Kylo’s eyes linger on him during the examination, “do you feel better?” he asks carefully – as though speaking might cause Hux to blow up at him again.

Hux snorts quietly, “yes, actually.”

Kylo nods sagely, “well, that’s good then.”

Hux laughs, if anyone knew how expressing anger would make you feel it would be Kylo Ren “my hand hurts,” he says, “and you have blood on your teeth.”

Kylo wipes his mouth with his sleeve before smiling timidly and a little hopefully at Hux “I bit my cheek; its fine. Drink?”

“Yes, please” Hux replies immediately.

However Ren doesn’t get to move very far before Hux is levelling his most intimidating glare at him “but first I want you to know that if you try to use the knowledge of my angry crying to your advantage I will destroy you. If I so much as think you are thinking about it I am going to stab you with your own lightsaber.”

Ren laughs.

“I’m entirely serious.”

“I know.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer:  
> I do not condone sex without a condom whether you are straight, gay or other. But this is space, and this is the Star Wars universe and if you want to tell me they can build a suit to keep a man alive after being half engulfed in lava but can’t create something to eradicate STD’s then go ahead. But I’m just gonna pretend that space lube contains STD destroying components or STD’s just don’t exist. Good day and enjoy the fuckery.

 It turned out Ren didn’t actually  _own_ any alcohol himself. What he was offering was to share a glass of whatever liquor he assumed Hux had squirreled away. Hux had then ordered the knight to shower before joining him in his own quarters; he would be damned if he finally opened that bottle just to share it with a man that still smelled like sweat, blood and smoke.

On his way back to his rooms Hux stops by the med bay to pick up some slow-melting ice for his hand and upon returning he has his own shower; releasing his anger had worked up enough of a sweat that he felt it was only fair. His hair was nearly completely dry by the time Ren showed up, a small bucket of ice in hand for the drinks.

“So…let me see if I understand this correctly.” Hux says when he lets Ren in “you offered me a drink that you didn’t know you could deliver on? What if I didn’t actually have anything?”

Ren shrugs and sets the small bucket of ice on the coffee table, right next to where Hux had set the Corellian rum after removing it from the shelf above his desk “I could have offered dinner.”

“…military rations, I presume? Or did you manage to buy an entire two person meal before you escaped Niru?”

“If I had I would have offered the meal first.”

Hux shoots him a withering look as he pours them each a fingers-worth of rum and adds ice to the glasses “I punched you and you thought ‘he just needs to experience the pleasure of my company?’”

“I doubt you’re willing to hit me again.” Ren smirks, accepting the offered drink “not today at least.”

“Don’t test me.” Hux mutters, relaxing back into the small couch opposite the one Ren had settled into.

Ren looks around Hux’s appointments before speaking again “your rooms are nicer than mine. Bigger too.”

“Well I am the General. Officially you’re only a visiting dignitary.”

“And you’re on board more.”

“That too.”

With that the conversation quickly drops off, Ren looks as though he isn’t sure what is safe to say and Hux finds himself a little ashamed of his earlier actions but unwilling to apologize for them. So he takes a slow sip from his glass and looks at his rooms furnishings.

The bathroom and bedroom were beside each other but one had to walk through what Hux generously called his living room, despite it barely looking lived in, to reach either one. Two small couches faced each other with a coffee table between them, for rare events such as this one, when he had someone visiting him privately but he wished for some distance from them. He had a small table and two chairs next to a small kitchenette and his desk sat against the far wall next to the HoloNet screen.

Hux recalls watching Ren’s mother talk about her son and reading about Luke Skywalker trying to figure out where he went wrong with his nephew.

“I watched some of those holovids, you know” he says without quite meaning to.

“Hmm?”

Hux looks back at Ren, “the ones my men took away when you came back.”

Ren nods minutely, “I thought as much. You did admit to knowing what they contained.”

“Yes, well.” Hux shifts the ice pack on his hand, “I was curious.”

Ren smiles, “and was your curiosity sated?”

“Not in the least.” Hux chuckles, “you aren’t bothered that I’ve seen them?”

Ren shrugs, “you’ve not even brought them up before now. Besides which, they are gone now. Likely destroyed at the Citadel.”

Hux agreed, choosing his next words carefully “Leia Organa seemed to blame herself for what happened at the Jedi School and your …defection to the dark side. Han Solo might have blamed her too.”

Ren tenses in his seat and narrows his eyes at Hux, “Leia Organa believes her son still exists. Whatever picture she has in her head of who her son was is not the Ben Solo that actually existed. Regardless of who Ben Solo was I am not that child and I never will be again.”

“I wasn’t trying to say you were.” Hux assures him.

The knight sighs and closes his eyes, “I barely remember the woman. She wasn’t around much and I was young when she sent me away. I remember being anxious around her because she was anxious around me. I remember hiding behind Da-Han Solo’s legs when she was angry because I could feel her frustration and irritation snapping at me through the force. Han Solo usually got frustrated with himself, not so much with me. I rarely felt as though I was the problem when he felt helpless or angry.

“I remember her teaching me how to meditate so I could better connect to and control the force; because I was breaking things without meaning to when I got upset and she was so tense and so afraid of me that I couldn’t do it in front of her. I practiced on my own and she was always more relieved than proud of me when I showed her I could do it. Then she would disappear again and I wanted her to stay because I wanted to have a mom like all the other kids did; I wanted her to be proud of me for what I could do and she wasn’t.”

“You knew what your parents were feeling?” Hux frowned, “is that a force thing?”

“For some force-sensitive beings, yes.” Ren explains. “I’m always feeling other people’s emotions through the force. When I was a kid I couldn’t ignore it and I had a difficult time differentiating between my own thoughts and all the emotions when I was in heavily populated places. I managed to teach myself how to ignore everyone else’s base emotions by the time I was oh, ten, I think? When I started apprenticing under Snoke he taught me to keep an awareness of certain kinds of emotions and feelings at the back of my mind. Even on a battlefield I can feel it the moment someone makes the decision to shoot at me; usually they’re angry with a small thread of anxiety mixed in. Worry over what will happen if they miss, I suppose.” Ren smiles dryly, “it’s very telling.”

Hux blinks at Ren for several seconds, “that is absolutely horrifying”

Ren laughs, “I’m quite used to it. It’s instinctive now to ignore it most of the time.”

Hux shudders and takes a small sip of his drink. He started unraveling when he couldn’t control his own emotions. He couldn’t imagine having to feel everyone else’s as well.

“When did Snoke get involved?” Hux asks so he doesn’t have to think about it anymore.

Ren frowns, “I’m not entirely sure. He never told me how old I was when we first met. I remember having a bracelet that gave off the same threads of dark energy as he does when I was really young. I remember feeling like I had to keep it a secret. I imagined a voice in my head when I was meditating sometimes – one that comforted me when I was afraid and told me how to manipulate the force through living things.” Ren shakes his head, “I don’t remember if that was all me or only sometimes me or him. I don’t imagine I’ll ever know who it was; I have no one reliable to ask. I wouldn’t believe Snoke no matter what he said.”

“No childhood friends?” Hux recalled Organa saying Ben didn’t like other kids; he had figured there had to be someone Ben spent time with. Even Hux had spent time with kids his own age, even if he never trusted any of them. 

Ren snorts, “No, neighbourhood kids always found me intimidating or disappointing. I don’t think I had ever been introduced to anyone without them knowing that I had Skywalker blood and was likely to be strong in the force. Other kids were either put off by how normal I was or by what I could be doing with the force without them realizing it. My lineage made me too unique among normal people; instead of being admired I was ostracized for it. People knew about Luke but they also remembered Vader and no one knew what to expect of this goofy looking kid that didn’t have any friends.”

Hux frowns, “so why were you trying to emulate Darth Vader if he was part of the reason you didn’t have any friends as a kid?”

Ren shrugs, “Snoke used him as an example; his use of the dark side was a sign that it wasn’t a bad thing – just another road to take. Luke talked about his father as though using the dark side hadn’t meant that he was a bad person. And Darth Vader helped Emperor Palpatine secure his reign and spread his rule across the galaxy. That was just further proof of how powerful the dark side was. Snoke convinced me that Vader and the Empire wouldn’t have fallen if Vader hadn’t shown weakness when faced with murdering his son. That’s most of the reason why he told me to destroy Han Solo. That was my strongest familial connection; something I couldn’t quite ignore and that made it a weakness that the Resistance could exploit. You know how that went.”

“So…what was with the helmet?”

Ren levels him with a withering stare, “not all of us are as good at remaining stoic when falling apart as you are, _General_.”

“You weren’t very good at it  _with_  the helmet either.”

Ren rolls his eyes and sips at his drink but doesn’t otherwise respond.

“If you had no friends because of the force and all that, why didn’t you make any at Skywalker’s Jedi School?”

“I still had a legacy lording over my head and my mother had just gotten rid of me because she didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t  _want_ to make friends. I was already struggling to find my position in the force and it just became worse under Skywalker's tutelage. That’s when I started feeling like the force was trying to rip me in two. Skywalker wanted me to use the light and Snoke wanted me to use the dark and I felt like I was drowning when I couldn’t commit properly to one side over the other.”

“How did Snoke’s lessons differ from Skywalker's? It’s all the same force is it not?”

“It has to do with intent and drive. A powerful Jedi can rip memories from someone else if they wished to but it’s the opposing principles that prevent them from doing so. Cultivating the power of the dark side requires different practices. Jedi meditate to reach ‘inner peace,’ and pledge not to harm innocents. The dark side is more self-serving than that.

“For decades I focussed on things that angered me while meditating and using the force; I built the foundation of who I was on hate and pain because that’s what Snoke told me would make me stronger. And I wanted so badly to be powerful. My motivations changed over time but I have always wanted to be powerful. Ben Solo wanted to be stronger so that his mother would come home. Then Ben Solo wanted to be strong so that he didn’t have to fight tears when people he wanted to be friends with just wanted to hear about his parents. Big boys didn’t cry; they squashed their pain and turned it into something productive but Ben Solo couldn’t quite figure out _how_.

“After I fled to Snoke I wanted to be powerful because his affections were based entirely on how strong I was.” Ren smiles self-deprecatingly, “there was a time, when I hadn’t quite figured out how to direct my rage and was new to the Citadel, that I used to keep salt in my pockets and before I went to train with Snoke I would cut myself and rub the salt in the wound when I felt myself tiring. I quickly learned that the best place to do it was the outer thigh; then it doesn’t bleed so much but there’s still a wound. He told me I was clever when he found out; that I had done a good job. I was so proud of myself when I didn’t have to do that anymore; because I thought that meant that I had control over he force.” He shakes his head as though to rid himself of the memory before continuing, “Then he would send me away to prove myself on some errand or another. And that control would start slipping. I would try meditating and focusing on the rage – building on it – but the longer I was away from the Citadel the more difficult it became to control that rage until I couldn’t. I believe you called my outbursts tantrums.” Ren chuckles, “you weren’t wrong.”

Hux shrugs, “they seem counterproductive. I don’t feel any stronger for having a ‘tantrum’ earlier”

“Yes well, I’ve spent most of my life desperate to please a man who cares little about me as a person. Don’t look so surprised, Hux. I’ve known for ages that I’m little more than a tool to him. It’s surprisingly easy to ignore knowing that you are being manipulated when you are busy appreciating that someone thinks you are worth the time to manipulate. Ben Solo was told that what he was doing was bad, that what he wanted was wrong, Ben Solo instilled fear in his parents when he just wanted them to let him feel what he felt without pushing guilt on him for doing so.

“Ben Solo felt like a disappointment to his mother and uncle, he felt like a monster when his father caught him playing with the force because he had no friends. Ben Solo felt unseen, unimportant and he just wanted someone to love him for who he was instead of pushing him away for not being who they thought he should be.

“And Snoke made Ben Solo feel… loved, did he?” Hux says sceptically.

Ren snorts, “no, but he told me that feeling what I felt wasn’t wrong, that I could do what I wanted and be what I wanted without turning into a monster. That people could respect and admire a person that showed the world what they could do unapologetically. Every time I connected with the dark side, every time I hurt someone intentionally or to meet my own desires he was in the back of my mind telling me I was a good boy, that I was smart, that I was loved and important. That he was proud of me.

“When he suggested I start destroying everything that made Ben Solo the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa I did so, because he paid more attention to me than Leia Organa ever did and he understood me better than Han Solo ever could. And when I finally burned all my bridges and fled to his side all that positive reinforcement; all that pride in my abilities dwindled away until I never heard a kind word from him. He kept me in line by filling me with the fear that he would throw me away if I disappointed him. He assured me he still cared but that I was a disappointment and he was the first person in my life that let me accept parts of myself that other people thought were unsavoury.”

“I don’t understand,” Hux says, “if you knew he was using you why didn’t you just leave?”

“I can’t properly explain it I don’t think.” Ren says, “I had sacrificed too much for him to just walk away, I thought I killed my uncle and a school full of Jedi trainees; I had no place to go back to. I still remembered feeling unseen, and unimportant and I wanted affection and, despite feeling weak for wanting it,  _his_  attention was the closest to what I wanted and I just kept telling myself if I tried harder I could get his affection back. And by the time I realized I couldn’t, that that affection was fake in the first place, I was in too deep and didn’t know how to leave so I kept trying. I can’t properly describe that level of desperation.”

Hux ponders what that might have felt like but quickly gives it up as a lost cause. He hadn’t had much in the way of people he could rely on emotionally either, and after his mother had passed he had no one at all; but he had managed to rely on himself growing up and adjusting to only having himself to rely on was easy after that. He couldn’t honestly say if he would have fallen victim to someone else’s affections if the opportunity had presented itself. But then, his mother had taught him to be suspicious of others and his father had proved why he should be.

“So what changed,” Hux asks after pulling himself from his thoughts, “why are you still not seeking his approval?”

Ren sighs, “He ordered me to kill Han Solo, he said that doing so would make me stronger – but it didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t but I thought I had to try anyway. But Han looked at me as though I was still his son, as though he still loved me and I’m not. But.” Ren swallows hard and his eyes flicker as though searching for words on the ceiling, “seeing that love he still had for Ben put things into a different perspective. Snoke had never looked at me like that. Snoke never would feel like that - he’s probably not even capable of it. I was submitting to being a weapon and fighting every little piece of me that wanted to do something else for someone who would never care about me the way I wanted to be cared for.

“Keep in mind; I hadn’t realized this till much later. I ignored as many emotions as I could that day and forced myself after the scavenger and traitor with the rage seeing Han Solo filled me with. And the bowcaster wound. That helped. I was mad that I hadn’t seen it soon enough to stop it from hitting me completely and it was really hard to think about much with that amount of pain.” Kylo smirks as he watches Hux readjust the ice on his hand, “on a similar note, how’s that feeling?”

Hux scowls at him, but there’s no heat behind his words when he says “sod off.”

“So…” Hux begins a moment later, “You realized that you would never get what you wanted from Snoke. What now, why are you still here and not” Hux motions towards the window, “out there somewhere.”

Kylo frowns, “I have nowhere to go. Just because Snoke is a waste of my time doesn’t mean that I can just walk away. It feels like there is no part of my brain that hasn’t been moulded by what Snoke wanted of me. And I’m still trying to figure out what is me and what is me influenced by him. I’ve spent almost the entire time since I returned to the Finalizer examining every little opinion I have, tearing apart all of my instinctual reactions to things. Trying to determine what is me and what is him and trying to fight off all the little pieces of me that demand I go back to him and try harder. At times it’s absolutely terrifying, how monumental of a task that is. And I keep flipping between wanting to give up and wanting to try harder and some days I just want to sleep forever because I did this to myself.”

Hux frowns at the knight, “you did not cause this.” He says sharply, putting his barely touched drink on the side table next to his melting ice pack, “You were a child when Snoke approached you, you were a child with parents that didn’t know how to handle you and he took advantage of that. You can’t blame yourself for the failures of the people tasked with caring for you. That is not your fault – all you can do is work with what they left you.”

“So, everybody else fucked me up but  _I_ have to put myself back together because no one else was willing to put up a fight for my sake?” Ren laughs humourlessly, “That’s not fair at all.”

Hux smiles sadly, “no, it’s really not. But you can’t rely on other people to put you back together. They are less likely to know where the pieces go than you are.”

“You almost sound as though you know that’s like.”

Hux shakes his head and gets up to grab the datapad from his desk “maybe I’ll tell you another time. I need to eat something before my stomach eats itself.”

“Do you…want me to leave?” Ren asks carefully.

Hux looks back to see Ren regarding him carefully, as though unsure and mentally preparing himself to be disappointed.

“Well it’s not as though you’ve had time to eat since this morning either.” Hux says and motions to the datapad. “Any requests?”

Ren groans but makes himself more comfortable on the couch, “yes, the cardboard flavoured one would be splendid.”

Hux smiles, “you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Did you see the giant hunk of meat roasting in that market today? I can’t describe how good that smelled.” Ren sighs dramatically, “I should have stolen it before we left.”

“Well, no one ever said you were good at thinking in the heat of the moment.” Hux replies, smirking when Ren glares at him, “what do you want me to order, Ren.”

“Ugh, whatever you’re getting will do.”

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

They don’t speak much as they eat, Hux is too preoccupied examining and organizing the new information received from Ren’s view of Ben Solo’s past to think about making conversation.

Ren is too busy watching Hux’s mind at work to bother complaining.

It wasn’t until his food was gone that Hux met Ren’s eyes again; they watch each other in silence for several minutes before the General finally breaks the silence.

“The offer of a drink; that was a little more than a conciliatory gesture wasn’t it?” he asks.

Ren’s lips twitched as though he was fighting off a smirk, “what makes you think that?”

“The last time you spoke so candidly about yourself you had been drinking, neither of us even managed to finish a glass tonight so it wasn’t that. You didn’t even hesitate to answer any of my questions. You aren’t the type of person to offer what might be misconstrued as weakness just because I yelled at you; quite the opposite in most situations I would imagine. I already told you I wasn’t going to return you to Snoke for punishment, not without a fight at least – so this isn’t about trying to re-affirm my favour in that respect unless you think I was lying.”

“I have no reason to believe you are anything but a man of your word.”

“Well that’s something, at least.” Hux smiles, “so, do you feel like telling me the purpose behind going to so much trouble?”

“It wasn’t any trouble to offer you a drink I didn’t actually have.”

“Well no, but it is an effort you wouldn’t have bothered making before the destruction of Starkiller base.”

“I have since discovered that you aren’t always the uptight, pompous asshole I thought you were.”

“Oh good, I’m glad you think so highly of me.” Hux deadpans.

“That’s not” Ren groans into his hands, “that’s not what I mean. You’ve not. You listened, on Reecee, and you didn’t look at me afterwards like I was meaningless for admitting to being confused. You had asked. You wanted to know why I was different. It was a novel experience to not have that used against me. You didn’t look as though you saw me differently, as weaker. You looked at me like-” Ren cuts himself off with a small grunt and looks Hux in the eyes before continuing, “I just. The last two weeks haven’t made that night any less important to me. I appreciated it. I still do, even if I took it further than you really wanted it to go. And it was good, that you yelled at me. That was the most honest rage I think I’ve ever been subject to. I didn’t mean to – I don’t know how to do certain things by half measures. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just wanted to try this whole… thing. To see if I could…I don’t know.” Ren frowned at his plate on the table, as though he had looked to it for the words he wanted to say but it hadn’t delivered.

“Did you think I hadn’t wanted to have sex with you?” Hux asks.

Ren flinches as though Hux had taken another swing at him, “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure. You were so…you didn’t want to acknowledge it. I figured you regretted it.”

Hux frowns, “could you not feel my attraction through the …force? I spent that entire week wanting to touch you. I wanted to do so long before that.”

“Oh,” Ren says dumbly; a hint of bashfulness flitting across his features “I had thought maybe I had been confused, that I was picking up someone else’s lust. In the cantina. And maybe that I had been projecting my own, in the forest. I thought. You looked ashamed. The next morning. It wasn’t so difficult to believe, that I had read everything wrong. I’m quite familiar with making mistakes.”

“I hadn’t…regretted it,” Hux says, “I wasn’t ready to deal with what it meant.”

Ren blinks slowly, “so what does…what did it mean?”

“I haven’t arrived at a definitive conclusion,” Hux says with a small conciliatory smile “I am more than amendable to repeated performances, however.”

Ren looks at him carefully “you want to have sex again.”

Hux rolls eyes “yes.”

“Multiple times.”

“Well, I’m not sure I could handle a marathon tonight. It’s been a long day. But yes.”

“I don’t share well.”

“Why would I want to share you with somebody else?” Hux scoffs, “I’m not that selfless.”

Ren’s eyes crinkle with amusement at this statement, “what idiot told you that you were selfless?”

Hux takes a deep breath, “I would like a mutually exclusive sexual relationship with you. Whatever else is just…anything else involved happens. Are you amendable?”

“Are you treating this like a business arrangement?”

“For fuck’s sake, Ren. I’m trying to cut short the discussion so that we can get naked.”

Ren throws his head back and laughs, “Of course, General. I am amendable.”

“Right, good.” Hux nods and stands, smoothing out his shirt and leading the way to his bedroom, “we’re not doing it on the couch this time.”

Ren follows, pulls his cowl off and drops it carelessly to the floor; when he takes a step towards the General, however, Hux holds up a hand to stop him.

“No, no. If you start touching me right now I’ll never get all my clothes off.” Hux says while undoing his uniform jacket and carefully draping it over the back of a chair placed farthest from the door – and across the room from the Knight. “And you will not be making a mess of these clothes the same way you did to the last ones.”

Ren drops his robe and undershirt to the floor as he chuckles “I seem to recall you making a mess of them as well.”

“My point still stands.”

“Mmhmm.”

Hux doesn’t look at Ren again till he has completely undressed himself; when he turns around he finds Ren already naked and watching him as though he would like nothing more than to rip him apart with his bare hands and then put him back together so he could do it all over again.

Hux didn’t know what Ren was seeing; despite knowing what the other man was looking at. Hux was tall and stringy despite the addition of crunches and push ups to his morning ablutions decades ago. He had never been able to determine if he was so small because of some combination of genes or because he was born just before the destruction of the Imperial Empire and the first few years of his life were spent on the run; resulting in an improper amount of nutrients to support a growing baby. His father had put him on a high protein diet as a teenager and made sure he did what was deemed ‘an efficient amount of exercise to build muscle’ in an attempt to ‘fill him out’. But all the strength training in the world wouldn’t broaden Hux’s frame and he grew to accept that he was always going to look fragile without layers. As with most things in his life he twisted it to his advantage and used his appearance to formulate close relationships with people that had a higher position and a thirst for control and domination – how much damage could a tiny boy do after all? It hadn’t been what Hux would consider an enjoyable experience.

Nobody had ever looked at him like this though.

On Reecee Kylo Ren had looked at him as though he was a piece of art, as though Hux was the best thing he had laid eyes on and that touching him was just an added bonus. Hux had dismissed it immediately, people didn’t look at him like that when he was practically naked and they had been drinking besides, perhaps the Knight had simply not had a body under him in a long time.

Evidently it hadn’t been the alcohol, or desperation; because at that moment Ren looked  _hungry_. His pupils were blown so wide his eyes were black and they jumped all over the General’s body like he was trying to memorize it in case he never saw it again. He was fully erect already and he kept flexing his hands as though he wanted to touch but wasn’t sure quite where to start.

Hux’s eyes followed the Knight’s muscles as they rippled under his scarred skin and he felt his thoughts start to derail, he had blamed the complete lack of self-control during their previous liaison as a result of pent up sexual frustration and the alcohol.

He was really starting to wonder if he had made any correct conclusions about that night.

 “You never struck me as the type of man to get piercings and tattoos, General.” Ren’s gravelly voice serves to pull Hux out of his own observations, “I’m a little disappointed I hadn’t seen them before.”

Hux swallows hard, barely aware that he was replying “my shirt was on.”

Ren smiles with amusement, “so it was.” His eyes drift down to Hux’s left forearm, “was it always the insignia of a General ranking or did you add to it with each step of the ladder you climbed?”

“Lieutenant” Hux clears his throat and balls his hands into fists, trying to hide their shaking. Ren’s smile widens, “I got it as a lieutenant.”

 “You must have been fresh from the academy.” Ren nods towards the golden barbells in each of Hux’s nipples, “got those around the same time I presume?”

Hux nods, “later. I’ll – later. Please?”

“Alright.”

Hux quivers where he stands, Ren’s voice was impossibly deep and Hux couldn’t understand why Ren wanted him so badly but wasn’t making a move. They were naked and staring at each other across his  _bedroom_ , they were clearly both aroused, this was ridiculous. Hux was broken, whatever sanity he had left was absolutely  _screaming_  at him to move and touch before this opportunity passed, but he couldn’t do anything more than tremble under that gaze like he was paralyzed. He barely had time to consider that Ren might be holding him where he was with the force, just so he could look his fill, before the Knight’s face flickered from intense want to aroused confusion.

“My dear General why are you still all the way over there?”

Hux tries to say he doesn’t know, tries to point out that Ren hasn’t moved either but all he manages to do is whine embarrassingly from the back of his throat.

Ren seems to understand regardless, the confusion is replaced by an understanding smirk and he slowly relaxes his posture and spreads his arms invitingly.

“Come here, Hux.”

It’s spoken as more of a suggestion than a command but Hux doesn’t even realize he followed it until he’s suddenly in the other man’s arms; their naked chests pressed together and Ren’s cock burning a hot line against his abdomen.

Hux considers that he might be making a rather humiliating noise but he’s too busy pressing his mouth against Ren’s neck and shoulder in some mimicry of a kiss to bother trying to stop. Ren’s arms feel like brands where they press against his back, pulling him in to the Knight’s furiously hot body and Hux hadn’t realized how chilly his rooms were or how the cold had settled into his bones until now and Ren was like his own human version of Starkiller, a fragile body containing an unquantifiable power that just needs to be directed in the proper place to be truly devastating and right now all that power was aimed at Hux and he was incredibly relieved that the Knight couldn’t read his mind without making the effort obvious because the only things Hux’s mind could conjure were these half-formed and terribly fantastical contrasts and even those were quickly falling apart into nonsensical words and feelings like dust floating in the void of space. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed by the poetic similes he was coming up with because Ren was leading him backwards and encouraging him to get on the bed and the rumble of his chuckle was causing an earthquake in Hux’s body and he was trying to peel Hux’s hands away from where they were latched onto his hips and that was cruel, why would he do that -

 “Hux, you need to let go.” Ren murmurs fondly, tugging on the General’s wrists to signify what he means, “I can’t get you on the bed like this.”

Hux doesn’t like this idea, he doesn’t want to let go, so he responds by biting Ren’s shoulder and grunting a no. Ren hisses in surprise and let’s go of the General’s wrists in order to cup the back of his head and tug on his hair, when Hux still doesn’t move Ren slips his fingers into the longer strands and forces Hux’s head back. Hux’s eyelids flutter with pleasure and his grip on the other man’s body slackens but he still doesn’t let go completely.

“I need you to focus on me, General, can you do that?” Ren asks clearly.

Hux groans but manages to get his lust-blurred eyesight under control. When he does Ren smiles at him and loosens the grip in his hair but doesn’t let go.

“Do you have lube in here?” he asks.

When Hux’s head dips Ren’s grip tightens so he can only nod minutely. The response satisfies Ren regardless, and the Knight examines the bedroom quickly before settling back on Hux’s nearly vacant expression.

“Hux, this is important, pay attention” he reprimands and Hux forces himself to make eye contact with the Knight again. “Is it in the nightstand?”

He hums an affirmative after a moment of consideration and Ren rewards him with a quick kiss before stepping out of his hold and snatching his wrists before Hux can grab him again. Hux trembles when the cool air blows across the pre-come Ren left on his abdomen and he scowls at the Knight, cursing himself for not realizing he had loosened his grip.

“If you don’t get on the bed I won’t let you touch me, General.” Ren tells him, “as much fun as it might be I don’t  _actually_ want to fuck you standing up right now.”

Hux’s cock twitches at the idea and he manages to ask, “Someday?” as eloquently as he can.

This is to say not eloquently at all.

Ren huffs a laugh, “sure, Hux. But right now you are a mess and you need to lay on that bed so I can give you something to be a mess about. Yes?”  

Hux moans and nods again; it seems to take no time at all before he is on his back in the centre of his bed and Ren is shoving the unopened bottle of lube under one of the pillows for safekeeping. His fingers are in Ren’s hair and pulling him down for a biting kiss before Ren has even had a chance to settle himself on the bed but Hux is tired of being the only one desperate for contact, he’s so hard it hurts and Ren is so incredibly in control of himself at the moment that Hux is impressed and turned on and becoming increasingly annoyed by it.

Hux has a single moment to consider if this is what his previous partners felt when he was calm in the face of their desire before Ren’s settling between his spread legs and his cock is spreading it’s natural lubrication up the line of Hux’s own and he decides he really doesn’t care what anyone else thought or felt.

He chokes on his own gasp and jerks his head away from Ren’s mouth so he can try to breathe through the pleasure. If Ren is surprised by Hux’s reaction he doesn’t draw any attention to it; he continues to thrust gently against Hux and reaches back with one hand to spread Hux’s thighs a little wider. With his other hand Ren cups the back of Hux’s neck and tilts the General’s head up and to the side with a thumb pressed to the spot where mandible meets skull; opening his neck up to the Knight’s mouth and teeth. 

Hux continues trying to catch his breath and he thinks he might cry for the second time that day but his fingers tighten in Ren’s hair which causes Ren to groan and Hux spreads his legs as far as he can because every time he tries to match Ren’s rhythm he just messes it up. Then one of Ren’s hands is sliding between them and wrapping around Hux’s cock and he sobs because the scream catches in his throat when instead of jerking him off Ren’s fingers tighten at the base to hold off the orgasm he hadn’t even realized was approaching.

When Hux settles back into his own body he is incredibly frustrated but pleased to find that Ren is trembling and panting heavily where he’s lapping his tongue against Hux’s neck. Eventually Hux realizes that he is practically ripping the other man’s hair out and convinces his fingers to let go; when he does Ren lets go of his cock and Hux breathes a sigh of relief at the loss of pressure.

It doesn’t take long for Ren to start moving again, he reaches for the lube and starts talking between nipping and kissing at Hux’s chest.

“How would you like it, Hux?” he asks before sucking at a pierced nipple. If he’s disappointed by the lack of response he hides it well and licks at Hux’s sternum instead. “Would you like me to ride you?” he chuckles when Hux shakes his head no and the bottle of lube falls against Hux’s hip “of course you don’t. Would you like to ride me?” He kisses a trail as far down Hux’s stomach as he can from where he’s perched between the General’s legs. Ren pushes one of Hux’s trembling thighs up towards his chest with an elbow, “hold that would you? Perfect.” He smirks when Hux complies; Hux closes his eyes and takes a deep breath when he sees Ren’s wet fingers dip between them. “you couldn’t ride me if you wanted to, could you?” Hux moans when Ren’s wet thumbs start massaging his entrance and he digs his own nails into his knee so that he won’t accidentally let go. “That’s fine; I really don’t want you to ride me, not tonight at any rate. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day. Whenever.” Hux bites his lip when one of Ren’s thumbs finally breaches him; he thinks he hears Ren groan, but he’s too busy re-familiarizing himself with something entering him to really pay much attention.

Ren massages his muscles from the inside with his thumb and spreads the lube from his fingers on the outside. He quiets as he methodically spreads Hux open and when Hux opens his eyes just enough to see why the Knight stopped speaking he finds Ren watching his own hands work with some sort of religious reverence and his chest is moving as though he can’t quite catch his breath. Hux groans at the sight and pushes his hips down, forcing Ren’s two fingers deeper and grinding against them. He lets go of his leg and stretches his arms up so that he can push against the wall and make those fingers go impossibly deeper.

Ren’s chuckle is throaty and wet, “if you wanted more you could have just asked.” And then Ren’s fingers are hitting his prostate and rubbing and Hux’s hips pin his hand to the bed and he thinks he might be screaming or crying or some such nonsense but no one has ever done that on purpose, it’s always been an accident and they usually miss if they even bother trying to hit it again and it’s so  _good_. He’s so close and he reaches down to finish himself off but then his hand is being pinned to the mattress and Ren’s fingers aren’t touching that spot anymore despite still being inside him and when he opens his eyes to glare at Ren the Knight is glaring right back.

“Do you doubt my ability to get you off?” Ren demands, his fingers going back to stretching Hux out while he speaks, counteracting any attempts Hux makes to get those fingers to touch his prostate again.

“No, but fuck-” Hux snaps, his frustration finally allowing him to speak.

“Then you will come by my body alone.” Ren commands, “Is that understood?”

Hux surprises himself by immediately going limp and nodding; he resigns himself to allowing Kylo Ren to control when he reaches orgasm and instead of fear or terror he feels relief. He wonders when he became capable of handing over that much of himself without a fight; if it was always there or if this was a result of Ren giving so much of himself to Hux.

He isn’t granted much time to think on it; Ren is pulling his fingers away and reopening the bottle of lube with one hand, urging Hux to flip onto his stomach with the other.

“Like this,” Hux whines, not recognizing his own voice as it pleads “please, like this.”  

Ren gives him an understanding look and leans over him to kiss him gentler than he ever has and mumbles against Hux’s lips, “just at first,” he says reassuringly, “it’ll be easier, just at first, okay?”

Hux nods his understanding and sighs, turning over. When he’s on his knees he puts his hands in his own hair so he has something to hold on to while he waits and puts most of his weight on his forearms in case his knees can’t hold him.

Luckily the wait is short.

Ren’s hand is on his back, thumb stroking over Hux’s ass cheek soothingly as he spreads some more lube over his hole with the other hand. Then Hux is groaning as Ren enters him, the burn is less than what he was expecting; but then he couldn’t recall anyone spending so long on preparing him before and what stretch he feels only adds to his pleasure instead of detracting from it. But Ren only makes it about halfway before he’s pulling away again and Hux frantically pushes himself onto one hand and reaches back with the other; trying to pull Ren back in by the hips because the Knight has a strong grip on Hux’s waist and won’t let him push back.

“Dammit Hux,” Ren hisses, “this is going to be over very quickly if you don’t let me go slow-” he cuts himself off with a moan when Hux clenches around his cock at the sound of his absolutely obliterated voice.

 _I did that_ , Hux thinks and tries not to feel like it’s one of his greatest achievements.

“I can’t,” he says on a whimper when Ren thrusts back in, a little deeper this time, “I want- Please, Ren.”

When Ren’s grasp on his hips flutters in response to his begging Hux thrusts himself back, forcing Ren to bottom out and hiss into Hux’s shoulder blades when he falls forward. Hux doesn’t recall ever feeling more comfortable with someone else completely inside of him and he doesn’t let himself catch his breath before he tries to pull away so he can thrust back again. But Ren must feel him tense and wraps an arm around Hux’s chest so that he’s forced to follow when Ren sits back up, forcing himself impossibly deeper but making it very difficult for Hux to move properly.

“Is this what you wanted Hux?” Ren breathes into his ear while Hux pants on his cock “did you want it so deep you can’t move? Or did you want to fuck yourself onto me? I could have sworn you wanted to be on your back, but maybe I was wrong-”

“No!” Hux almost shouts between gasping breaths, “No, please! Ren. Ren, please.”

Ren’s hips twitch but his arm loosens and he lowers Hux back to the bed before slipping out. Hux breathes but doesn’t move, not sure what is happening – half convinced that he pushed Ren too far and he was going to leave before finishing this and-

“Hux, you need to roll over so that I can fuck you properly.” Ren says quietly, running a hand down his spine and dipping a finger into Hux’s ass.

Hux slaps Ren’s hand out of the way when he finally understands the words and rolls onto his back pulling at the Knight by the arms and wrapping his legs around his waist; fully prepared to fuck himself on Ren’s cock this way if he has to. Without a word Ren puts one of Hux’s ankles on his shoulder and slides his way back in. When he has a hand free he lifts Hux’s other leg up by the knee and begins to fuck him in earnest.

Hux loses himself to it, it’s the perfect angle and he thinks he might be losing feeling in his legs due to the shocks shooting through his limbs every time Ren rams into his prostate. It’s the most glorious fuck he’s ever had and if he could string two words together he would wonder why they waited so long to do this. Ren’s abdomen is shaking and the muscles in his arms and neck are tense as though he’s testing this weird control he seems to have over himself in bed and Hux has never thought a person could be so magnificent while sweating and straining but if he wasn’t already having sex with this man he would totally ask him for a fuck.

Then Ren lets go of his leg and grabs Hux’s purpling cock and it barely takes three strokes before Hux is coming all over himself with a soundless scream. He barely notices Ren fucking him through it before whimpering through his own orgasm; Hux might not have noticed at all if the force of Ren’s orgasm hitting his inner walls didn’t make him twitch.

Hux loses track of how long he lays there catching his breath; sight and sound muted. Long enough for Ren to clean him up, he’s pleasantly surprised to note. He still has the remains of a damned good orgasm on him due to the rather lackluster attempt at wiping it away but the thought was nice if relatively ineffective. He absently wonders if he was always going to be a genuinely whiny, begging mess whenever Ren touched him and if it was going to translate into his work, before deciding he really didn’t care at that moment.

He takes a fortifying breath and blinks at the ceiling before turning his head to look at where Ren is on his stomach, head laying on the pillow in his arms; watching Hux recover quietly.

Hux tries to speak but coughs instead and shoots Ren a half-serious scowl when the Knight chuckles and produces a half filled bottle of water from under the pillow. Hux finishes it off before putting the cap back on and throwing it at Ren’s butt, where it bounces off and falls somewhere on the floor.

“Rude.” Ren mumbles into the pillow.

Hux ignores him, “are you always so good in bed, or is this a unique situation?”

Ren shrugs his shoulders and hides his grin in the pillow but his eyes are still crinkled and smug. Hux’s scowl deepens but still doesn’t hold up to how he would look if he was truly angry.

Ren rolls his eyes and shifts so he’s not speaking into fabric, “nobody whose opinion I respected ever told me how I should behave in bed or tried to tell me how it was done. I figured it out on my own and I revelled in knowing it was all me.” He explains quietly, “it was one of the few areas in my life where I felt I could be what I wanted to be and if the person I was with didn’t like it I could always find someone who did.” Ren snorts at himself, “also it felt really good so I practiced as often as I could.”

Hux huffs but doesn’t otherwise respond, instead trying to will himself to move and properly clean up and failing miserably. Eventually Ren shuffles closer to him and reaches a hand out to poke at Hux’s nipple; the General raises an eyebrow questioningly but says nothing so Ren flicks the barbell in it. When Hux hisses and slaps his hand away Ren chuckles again.

“You said you would tell me the story behind them later. It’s later.”

Hux frowns and directs his eyes back towards the ceiling, “The biggest threat to someone in a position of power is the sign of someone with aspirations and the intelligence to use it. After I graduated the Academy I downplayed my ambition by taking on the persona of a boy who joined the military to honour his dead father but was only interested in partying and fucking because those types of people don’t generally get very far – it was easier to find traits to exploit in other officers when they didn’t view me as a threat to them at all. I ended up performing a lot of stupid dares under the pretence of drunkenness and a ‘desperation to please others’ to that end. I had little feeling in my nipples anyway, so I got them pierced one night.” Here Hux chuckles, “I made myself cry after it was done, the man who dared me to do it felt bad for weeks, he revealed a lot of useful information during that time. A year or so later there were three of us that got tattoos when we were promoted at the same time. It helped secure a ‘connection’ between us” Hux grins at Kylo, “ _They_  never made it higher than Lieutenant. I made damn sure of that.”

“Have you ever done anything without an ulterior motive?” Ren asks carefully after a tense moment of hesitation.

Hux’s grin transforms into something more honest and less manic and he makes sure that Ren is looking him in the eyes when he says, “not often, no.” when Ren’s face starts to fall Hux slides his hand under the pillow to wrap it around Ren’s wrist, “I didn’t actually have an ulterior motive behind this.” He says quietly, “there is very little to gain by sleeping with you that I couldn’t also get by befriending you.” Hux frowns when that doesn’t seem to appease the Knight, “my only motivation for sleeping with you was to sleep with you.”

Ren watches him carefully for several seconds before his lips slowly turn into a wicked smile, “you think I’m irresistible.” He teases.

“ _Ugh_.”

When Hux tries to remove his hand and pull away Ren pulls him closer until he is half pinning Hux to the bed.

“ _You_ think I’m sexy.” Ren whispers into his neck before licking a long stripe from his collarbone up to his ear.

Hux cringes away, “I  _think_  you are a disgusting oaf and that I need to go to the ‘fresher.”

Ren only lets him go when Hux agrees to share a quick shower.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

The next morning Hux wakes Ren up with his mouth and Ren returns the favour in the shower but then the Knight slides back into the bed and denies pouting when Hux won’t join him. The General is incredibly aware of the eyes following every one of his movements as he dresses. He pauses just before leaving the bedroom before sighing loudly and surrendering to his disturbingly sentimental whims.

Ren eyes him suspiciously as Hux approaches but responds to the kiss readily enough. He tries to drag the General into bed by his pristine uniform but Hux catches his hand before he can be touched.

“If I come back and anything in my room is broken I am going to vent you.” Hux says lowly.

Ren grins, “What else will you do?”

Hux rolls his eyes and stands, straightening out any creases, “clean it up of course.”

Ren snorts and rolls over to bury himself deeper into the covers, “if you want me to leave you could just say so.”

Hux frowns and turns around in the doorway again, “if you leave I expect you to come back tonight.”

Ren pops up from under the covers, “really?”

The General lets his eyes scan Ren’s naked chest and he allows his appreciation to show in his smirk, “well I have to prove that I am just as capable of pulling someone apart in bed as you are, don’t I?” is all he says before making his way to the main door. He chuckles to himself when he hears Ren groan but smothers it long before he sees anybody else on his way to the med bay to get a cooling patch for where his hand is still slightly swollen.

Once on the bridge he attends to the morning meetings and goes over reports and not once does he find his thoughts drifting to the naked man likely still in his bed without quickly being able to pull himself back. He simply takes a moment to be grateful that Kylo Ren didn’t  _actually_  break him and that no one on board has looked at him as though he is irrevocably different from the day before and then directs his full attention to the datapad in his hand.

It’s almost the end of his shift when they get a call from the Citadel demanding Hux’s presence in the holochamber immediately.

Hux makes his way down and ensures that his fists aren’t clenched when he sees that Kylo Ren isn’t waiting for him so they can enter together and correctly assumes that he will be attending a private conference with the Supreme Leader.

“General Hux,” Snoke begins when Hux stands before him, “I seem to recall being told you were going to the Reecee System. But I have been receiving reports of an altercation between Kylo Ren and the locals of a planet in the Nirauan System. Do you care to explain to me what he was doing there?”

“Two weeks ago we returned from Reecee, Supreme Leader. We attempted to-” Hux snaps his jaw shut so hard when Snoke interrupts him that he fears for a moment that he might have chipped a tooth.

“And what did Kylo Ren find there?”

“I have been informed that any trace of Skywalker on Reecee wasn’t strong enough to be picked up.”

Snoke sits back in his chair, throwing his features into shadow, but when he speaks it is with a twisted sort of amusement.

“So, he failed this task then.”

“Yes, sir.”

Snoke’s fingers tap against the arm of his throne and he sighs as though disappointed but not surprised.

“Under whose orders did he go to the Nirauan system?”

“My own, sir,” Hux says, lowering his head in deference, “the Finalizer was running low on supplies. I instructed Captain Phasma to take Kylo Ren and a small team to procure some more at the market on Niru.”

“Did you also instruct them to attack the locals?”

“No, sir. They-“

“You walk a thin line, General. It was foolish of you to send Kylo Ren; especially after his repeated failures. And after he caused the destruction of your beautiful project, no less. One would almost think you had grown fond of him.”

“I had hoped-”

“Ah, therein lays the problem.” Snoke says, as though he understands, “I too had hopes for him, but he has proven a bigger disappointment than any of us could have expected. I think,” Snoke leans forward again; bathing his gnarled face in light, “that it would be prudent to rid ourselves of such a bad seed before he sows more destruction. Don’t you agree, General?”

Hux looks Snoke in his holographic eyes and says, “I do, Supreme Leader.”

“Then I’m sure it won’t be difficult for you to see to it.”

Hux hesitates before replying, “I admit to being uncertain of my success in such an endeavour. Will the force not inform him of my intentions?”

Snoke makes a noise that might be a laugh, “he is weak, General, and you were once a crack shot. Surely it will not be too much trouble to simply shoot him in the back of the head. I know you are not above using tactics that some may deem as… dishonourable.”

Hux nods his acquiescence, “of course.”

“Then I expect when you arrive at my Citadel you will be delivering his corpse.” Snoke sits back and begins tapping the arm of his chair once more, “do not disappointment me General, doing so will not end well for you.”

“It will be done, Sir” Hux assures him, bowing low.

He turns on his heel and strides from the chamber at his usual measured pace when he’s dismissed.

..-. .. .-. ... - / ... - . .--. ...

Hux makes his way through the ship towards his quarters, sending a message off to Captain Phasma that he wishes to meet with her in an hour and stops by the med bay again to replace the cold bandage on his hand because it’s still aching.

When he arrives in his room Kylo Ren is sitting on one of his couches and appears to be reading from what Hux assumes is the Knight’s personal datapad. He’s mostly dressed but his boots are off and his robe and cowl are lying across the back of the other couch.

The General throws the cowl at the other man before he can utter a greeting.

“What the hell?”

“Get dressed,” Hux snaps, “we have a meeting with Captain Phasma in twenty minutes.”

“What? Why?”

Hux kicks the Knight’s boots closer to him pointedly, “because we not only have to plan a mutiny but an assassination as well and I would really rather have something of a plan in place before I start announcing my intentions to the crew.”

Ren pauses in putting on his boots, “what happened?”

“The Supreme Leader has tasked me with killing you and I really don’t feel like it.” Hux explains, “I would much rather kill him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are interested in some Headcanons relating to this story, as well as some reference pictures i use please click [-here-](http://couronnebead.tumblr.com/Steps-Universe)

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on [Tumblr](http://crownbeed.tumblr.com/)  
> Want to share this story on Tumblr? [Click Here](http://crownbeed.tumblr.com/post/148506262998/first-steps)


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